I once had a job as an IBM Proof Machine Operator, as did hundreds of workers in large downtown banks. I doubt if that exists anymore.
A Proof Machine was how all checks were sorted at all banks before the printed coding was implemented. An operator read the check, entered the amount on a keyboard with the right hand, then fed the check into a slot with the left hand after punching one of 32 buttons that controlled the sorting mechanism. The check was whisked into one of the 32 pockets in a drum mechanism and 32 printing adding machines in the rear kept tabs on the dollar contents of each, plus one for the running grand total.
This machine was the only one at the time that could handle any piece of paper of the rough size and shape of a check, and didn’t require the standard IBM punch cards.
In the bank where I worked, I developed a routine (which involved programming the machine’s plugboard) to handle loan payments. What took an assistant auditor most of the day I was able to do in about an hour. The auditor was overjoyed, but my boss didn’t like it much – she was afraid I’d screw up the machine, as no one had ever reprogrammed it before and she didn’t know what those wires and plugs did.
I knew receptionists and administrative assistants have snazzy phones with multiple lines to receive and dispatch calls, of course (the administrative assistant in our department has one on her desk!). I didn’t know whether they still use the term “PBX” for that kind of thing.
There was an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s where a character was looking through want ads in the newspaper and noticing a lot of ads for “keypunch operators”. She said she didn’t even know what a keypunch operator was. (I was studying computer science in college at the time and was intimately familiar with keypunch machines.) That is a profession that is undoubtedly defunct now, although “data entry” is similar.
Lots of barrels are also made for the winemaking industry as well. Granted, barrels were much more in demand say… 100-150 years ago, but being a cooper is still a going profession, unlike some of the others that date from those days.
My Mom was something close to a proof machine operator for the original BofA in the early 1950s.
My first “IT” job included maintaining the plug boards and operating the last few IBM offline tab machine dinosaurs my employer still had. Tried my hand at creating a few plugboard programs from scratch; it wasn’t easy. A couple years later the last real tab machine had gone the scrapyard.
We still had lots of programs, JCL, and even a few datasets on cards so we kept a non-programmable 12-pocket card sorter to reindex the database after the occasional but inevitable dropped deck.
About 5 years later TSO, IPSF, IMS, CICS, et al, had eliminated the last physical punched card and the sorter followed its old stablemates into the scrapyard. All 3000 pounds of it. Those things were built like a 1951 John Deere.
I think to be truly “defunct” a profession must meet some criteria. It is actually surprisingly difficult to think up a profession no-one still does, somewhere.
It has to be something no longer useful, because the good or service is either no longer used, or done cheaper and better some other way.
That isn’t enough, because there are whole categories of goods which are no longer used, but are collector’s items or have some specialist interest. No one “needs” a medieval broadsword, but forging them is nonetheless an existing occupation.
Also, even if the good or service can be performed some cheaper way, there are whole categories of activities people do anyway, because it is fun, or because handmade has qualities superior to machine-made (so, lots of potters still exist, both as hobbyists and because there is still a market for hand-made pottery, even though machines can stamp out pots very cheaply).
Also, there cannot be a lot of interest in knowing how it was done. There are still people who specialize in such archaic skills as flint-knapping, just to learn more about ancient flint-knappers.
Thus, a good candidate for truly “defunct” professions are industrial occupations, in which laborious, dirty and/or dangerous activities have long been replaced with improvements to machinery - assuming the occupations don’t still exist somewhere like North Korea.
@malthus: We had a similar thread not long ago about the idea of ancient process knowledge that’s supposedly been lost. We eventually got around to the conclusion that damn near nothing that humanity has ever learned how to do has been truly forgotten. For the reasons you enumerate.
Somebody somewhere today knows how to knap a flint, tie it to a stick with grass & bark, and has killed a large herbivore using just such a self-made tool. And cooked and eaten part of the critter after starting a fire using makeshift found objects.
@yabob: A link or some explanation would help. So far all we you’ve given us is two generic nouns side by side.
Process for making bar iron or mild steel before the invention of the Bessemer converter:
Note how the article uses the verb “were” pretty throughout in describing the process. The Bessemer converter was invented in the 1850s. It was a skilled occupation, and a very dirty, dangerous one that didn’t scale up easily. As per the wiki article:
Yup. That’s exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of.
It is hard to imagine anyone these days really wanting “artisanal hand-puddled steel”, or anyone whose idea of a fun hobby is “puddling their own steel” after a hard day’s work at the office. Nor is the process so interesting that some museum somewhere has recreated it, to learn the secrets of early Victorian steel-puddlers.
(With the caveat that someone in the developing world may, for all I know, still be doing it!).
Yes, except there are still horse-drawn carriages, and people still drive them, and they still use buggy whips. You can get brand-new ones today on Amazon. It’s exactly the sort of niche profession that can still exist, despite being obsolete. Contrast that to flint-knapping, which doesn’t.
after the occasional but inevitable dropped deck.