I was recently asked, “What was your first job?” It caused me to reflect on the work done by my parents, as well as my own working career.
The first memory this question provokes is of becoming aware of what a job is, and why one is needed. As a child of about five or six, I greatly enjoyed being “Daddy’s girl.” I would follow my dad around the house, yard, and garden, trying my best to help and earn his praise. Daddy worked as a skilled journeyman typesetter – a Linotype Operator – at a local newspaper on the second shift, so he left for work in the afternoon and returned home late at night.
I wished he didn’t have
to leave and could stay home every day, so I asked my mom, “Why does Daddy have
to go to work?” The answer came quickly: “To make money, child. We need money
to have a place to live, to buy food and clothes and things for the family.”
Oh, OK, so it’s important for him to go. But one more thing: “What does Daddy
do at work?” The quick answer from a busy mom: “He’s a printer.” Not long
after, an adult asked me, “What kind of work does your father do?” My confident
answer: “He prints money.” More questions quickly followed!
Linotype
https://www.printersdevil.ca/linotype-machine
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Linotype_machine
VIDEOS: Step-by-Step: https://youtu.be/YAOOz_7_v9Q
In Operation: https://youtu.be/M12sYvUb4)0
Thomas Edison called the Linotype the Eighth Wonder of the World. Made of 10,000 parts – 5,483 of which were moving – its mechanics were finer and more delicate than many of the operations that go into the making of a fine watch. It used molten metal heated to 550˚ F. Mistakes landed in a “hell box” for recycling. The seven-year apprenticeship included three years to learn to operate it, plus four years to learn to fix it! The skilled craftsmen who operated it were well-paid and highly sought after; they could move and find work just about anywhere, and they created a labor union that was responsible for eight-hour workdays and 40-hour work weeks.
My father
apprenticed at The Jackson Times in Jackson, KY, under the tutelage of Allen
M. Trout, and spent most of his career at The
Lexington Herald-Leader. I remember the industrial smell of hot metal and
ink infused in his clothes, the stray brass matrices/molds that would occasionally
appear in his pants cuffs, and a VERY LOUD tour of the Composing Room. Now I
understand why he was always so insistent on accuracy and good
spelling: on a Linotype, there was no backspacing over an error. A whole molten
“line of type” would have to be re-set just to correct a single comma or character
(then proofread again – backwards).[1]
– Benjamin
Franklin
“Carelessness does more harm than a want of knowledge!”
More than that, my father encouraged
me to learn a skill – “something that not just everybody can do.” His was
the mechanical age of Linotypes, mine was the emerging age of computers, but
our two vastly different careers had much in common. He retired in 1972 as
Linotypes faded from use. (He died in 1979; the
benzene commonly used to clean the machinery was likely related to his
leukemia.) My love of computerized desktop publishing and graphic design to
create a printed page was surely influenced by those early smells of ink and attention
to detail. I retired in 2022 just as Artificial Intelligence began to
revolutionize computing. I wonder what marvels the next 50 years will bring.
Then my dear stay-at-home mother took a part-time job as a lunch lady/cashier at a nearby
elementary school to earn some extra pin money – much of which was spent on me.
Among other things, she bought me some trendy Aigner shoes, a white sweater
cape, a fashionable rabbit-fur hat, and a hard-bonnet hair dryer... She took me
shopping at the upscale Purcell’s department store downtown where we bought
three dresses, each of which I wore for years and can still describe in detail
(girls could not wear pants to school until much later).
Most importantly, she bought fabric and taught me to sew on her old Singer treadle sewing machine. I’m not sure I adequately appreciated or thanked her for the hard work she did in that cafeteria and at home to help fulfill my teen-age desires, but she set a strong example for working hard, budgeting, spending, saving, “making do,” and showing love.
Mom's Singer Treadle
Patterns for styles from 70s
My computerized Singer machine today
In high school at Tates Creek I had my first real job interview. A new shopping mall was opening nearby (Fayette Mall) and several stores were coming into the school seeking students to fill various part-time retail positions. I was selected for an interview to work in a stationery store. I was Very Shy, and So Nervous! Sitting in a counselor’s office at age 16, I gave what I thought were great answers (i.e., very precise and short) to the interviewer. Finally he asked, “Why should we hire you instead of someone else who walks through that door?”
Welp. I hesitated, with no idea
how to respond. It certainly did not seem right to brag about myself or to run
down my fellow students. So I consciously decided to just stay quiet and, hmmm,
look intelligently thoughtful – surely a technique to impress and guarantee
success? The interviewer waited patiently while I maintained a carefully blank
expression and ‘intelligent thoughtful silence’ for an awkwardly long time.
Finally he thanked me for the interview, and it was over. Needless to say, I
did not get the job. But I learned about the need for self-confidence,
assertiveness, and professionalism. I never forgot that question, and to this
day I still think of how I should have answered it. Speak up for yourself,
girl!
I cut high school short in 1972
when I realized that by taking only one more class in summer school, I could fulfill all academic requirements and graduate a year ahead of schedule.
I did so and enrolled at Lees Junior College in Jackson, Kentucky, enabled by a
strong financial aid package that included a work-study program that was my
first real job for pay. Due to my interest in sewing, I was assigned to work as
an assistant in the Home Economics Department. The enthusiastic young professor
was just a gem; work was fun! I got to use fancy new sewing machines, I learned
all about a brand-new kitchen gadget called a microwave oven, and my salary
helped cover the cost of tuition.
In 1974, while
enrolled at the University of Kentucky (UK), I landed a job as a switchboard
operator for the telephone company. Next were receptionist/bookkeeper stints in
the offices of a local cemetery and an appliance store, followed by secretarial
work at UK in the College of Education. When I was called to interview for a
really good job at IBM in 1978, I remembered my high school fiasco and nailed
it this time!
For a short while I worked for General Telephone as an Operator providing Long Distance and Information services, often on split shifts, sitting elbow-to-elbow in a long row of Operators with a supervisor walking behind. Busy, busy!
Word
Processors
Starting in 1977, I worked in a state-of-the-art Word Processing Center at IBM Lexington, where we gave frequent tours to the public to show off the latest technology.
https://web.stanford.edu/~bkunde/fb-press/articles/wdprhist.html
Selectric
Typewriter: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/selectric/breakthroughs/
Mag Card II Typewriter: (record and replay/change text, no screen) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW_jJjUarp0
Office System 6: (8” diskettes, small orange screen, first/massive ink jet printer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_OS/6
Computers
In 1980 I completed a computer science curriculum called Special Programmer Training at the IBM Lexington typewriter plant and became a Programmer/Analyst. We used time-sharing terminals and batch processing for the mainframe computer that took up its own full floor. We coded batch jobs using programming languages such as COBOL, PL/1, Assembler, JCL, DB2, SQL and more; processing ran overnight, requiring 24/7 on-call duty in case of any sort of data abnormality or coding error.
IBM
Mainframe System 360
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer
https://spectrum.ieee.org/building-the-system360-mainframe-nearly-destroyed-ibm
IBM
Personal Computer
https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-ibm-pc-won-then-lost-the-personal-computer-market
History of Data Storage
As Apollo 11 sped silently on its way to landing the first men on the Moon in 1969 (with my future husband working for NASA at Cape Kennedy), its safe arrival depended on a computer knitted together by “LOL memory” - rope core memory that was literally assembled by “Little Old Ladies.” In a factory outside Boston, they would “weave” the software instructions by threading slender copper wires through and around tiny magnetic cores. The Apollo Guidance Computer had 4KB RAM and a 32KB hard disk.
Weaving the Way to the
Moon
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8148730.stm
Punch
Card 80 bytes (characters)
Mag Card 5,000 bytes
Floppy Disks 80KB-1.44 MB
CD: 700
MB
DVD 4.7-17 GB.
Microchip components are so small they are measured in nanometers (nm). Some components are now under 10 nm, making it possible to fit billions of components on a single chip. In 2021, IBM introduced a microchip based on 2 nm technology, smaller than the width of a strand of human DNA. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter or one-millionth of a millimeter. At that scale, it is possible to fit up to 50 billion transistors on a microchip the size of a fingernail.
TELEPHONES
Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, Inkjet and Laser Printers…
CONSTANCY = CHANGE
Since that first work-study job in 1972, I was continuously employed through 2022 except for a few months here and there, with major changes of direction about every 10-15 years.
In 1994, after IBM split off the typewriter plant to
form Lexmark, I was still working at IBM itself and there was serious
discussion of an out-of-state transfer. I opted to take a buyout instead, and with
my husband Al, started a retail business selling personal computers and office
supplies in downtown Paris, KY. After his death in 2000, I joined the local
public library as the Information Technology (IT) Manager, supervising the
library’s transition to automation, managing a network of about 30 computers
for staff and public use, and teaching computer classes for adults. For years I
moonlighted as a QuickBooks Bookkeeper for a thoroughbred horse farm – a
delightful spot with lovely folks and magnificent animals. Later I moved to
Frankfort, KY, and spent my final working years as the Parish & Financial
Administrator for a church, focused on desktop publishing and
bookkeeping.
A friend’s young grandchild recently climbed into an unfamiliar car and said, “Where is the button to make it start?” Demonstration was needed to show how to use a key to start the car. Technology keeps changing. Our Boomer memories are slipping into historical footnotes.
I remember when our first home telephone (a party line) was installed, and the first large-cabinet, tiny-screened black-and-white TV that soon followed. I remember calling and being ‘the Operator.’ I remember watching men walk on the moon. I remember manual typewriters, word processors without screens, and bookkeeping with oversize sheets of columnar paper. I remember running inventory for a manufacturing plant with thousands upon thousands of punch cards, and I remember driving to work at 2:00 a.m. to search meticulously through huge stacks of printouts because somebody coded an errant comma or other flaw, and batch jobs to process plant payroll or world trade shipping were impatiently demanding the fix (shades of that infernal comma fix on a Linotype!).
Nowadays just about everyone has a powerful phone/ computer in a pocket or on a wrist. Starting an electric car takes only a pushbutton. Desktop publishing has replaced the Linotype machine, but the process still results in creating something useful from thin air. Daddy would be astounded! In my own Boomer lifetime, incredible gadgets from science fiction and wondrous technologies such as microchips, fiber optics, the Internet, social media, online shopping/ research/ entertainment/ education, streaming TV and music, smart appliances, satellites, space travel, incredible deep-space telescopes, and more – have carried us far beyond the fantastic, futuristic dreams of our youth.
The knowledge of the universe is literally at our
fingertips, and Artificial Intelligence is already creating the next big
revolution in technology…
“Truly the magic of myth and legend
has come true in our time.” [2]
Mona
Landrum Proctor
June 21, 2023
[1] “The Cost of a Comma,” Harvard Magazine,
by Christopher Reed, 1998. https://harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/html/1998/11/comma.html
[2] The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks Jr., Addison-Wesley Professional (1975, 1995), accessed 6/21/23.
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