Happy Emma Nutt Day! The world's first female telephone operator starts her new job 141 yrs ago

[asiliveandbreathe]

29. Your story of your grandmother, as an operator who had to sleep at the exchange

due to a blizzard...brings me to my experience during the great blackout of 1965 New England and NY..I was just coming up on the end of my shift..around 6pm..all operators required to stay..they brought in cots.. I stayed another couple hours, started shift at 9am. made my way to a gas station that had a generator..and then off to my second job at the Framingham Motor Inn - I worked the cord board.. had to hand crank the 2 position board for juice to the rooms and out going calls....people were coming in from the Mass Pike, and we were the first Inn off the highway - no one knew until later how it happened...

I will never forget that night, I got a call shortly after getting to the Inn, from my Mom's neighbor to come home, the Fire Dept was there, Mom had decided to light the fireplace, but she forgot to open the flew, and the house filled with smoke - Mom had terrible asthma, and the neighbor took her in..

Folk lore a squirrel chewed the lines..nope.

On a particularly cold November evening, power demands for heating, lighting, and cooking were pushing the electrical system to near its peak capacity. Transmission lines heading into southern Ontario were heavily loaded. The safety relay had been mis-programmed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965