Lost Jobs . . . Really Lost

2010 March 22
tags: ,
by Ellen Noonan
Arthur Rothstein, "Ice Man. New York City." December 1941; FSA/OWI Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Arthur Rothstein, "Ice Man. New York City." December 1941; FSA/OWI Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

NPR’s website has a lovely slideshow on The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations, complete with archival photos, descriptions, and some oral history excerpts by practitioners of these lost professions. It made me think about other occupations made obsolete by technology. ASHP gained a valuable colleague when Andrea Ades Vasquez, a photo retoucher, saw the technological writing on the wall and made a career switch into public history. Then there are the jobs that go from commonplace to curiosity, like the handful of knife grinding trucks that still troll certain New York neighborhoods, or the seltzer delivery my sister-in-law in New Haven receives weekly.

So what vanished jobs did NPR leave out? And what would the same slide show look like twenty years from now?

Last 5 posts by Ellen Noonan

from → General Social History

2 Comments
2010 March 22
Leah Nahmias permalink

Ellen, this reminds me of an idea we used to kick around in graduate school: an exhibit (or experience?) that focused on the “lost sounds” of obsolete technology. Granted, this was in the context of a pretty boring historic preservation class, so we were eager to think of more interesting ways of preserving things from the past, as well as ways to preserve intangible things from the past like sounds. The pictures of the secretarial pool and the telephone and elevator operators, in addition to reminding me of Mad Men, also reminded me of the idea of the noises of outdated technology like typewriters, mimeograph machines, and the like. The Mad Men DVDs include episode commentaries with the sound editors who discuss recording and mixing such sounds to create “soundscapes” for the office scenes.

As for obsolete jobs, what about the sad story of the seed cleaner featured in Food, Inc., who’s being targeted by Monsanto for helping farmers save their seeds from year to year?

2010 March 25
andrea permalink

Nice find, Ellen. And thanks for thinking of my dear old profession. A bit depressing, though, to also find in the lovely slide show, my father’s (typesetter), and even a grandfather’s (iceman) line of work represented. I was going to say, “I guess we really know how to pick jobs in our family,” but they did serve each of us well back in the day!

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