Race and Technology: African American Women in the Bell System, 1945-1980

摘要

Telephone operators in America's largest cities experienced a dramatic technological transformation of their work process during the mid-1960s when the Bell System (AT&T and its associated companies) replaced cord switchboards with Traffic Service Positions— computerized equipment (see fig. 1). Martia Goodson, a former operator who worked on both types of equipment, described how astonishing the change was for her: [Cord board operators] get calls [at a] switchboard [which] is full of holes and over every hole there is a light. When the light lights up [it] shows that someone is calling. You stick the plug in that hole; but how fast you get the cord up there is up to you. . . . Every three or four positions the switchboard repeats itself . . . so you might start to go for a light and somebody else picks it up, . . . the light goes out.