Every week I stop in to singly or in succession shop read or pee at the Argosy Book Store on 59th St. (Photo: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/507dba43c4aabcfd2216a447/t/510aa33de4b024194a79ce1f/1359651646408/books9.jpg) and get to switch that switch if I ask nice on the elevator ride.
Ex hot-type typesetter here. I did the hand forms (a la Gutenberg up to Linotype) still done, and fooled around on the Linotype when the boss let me.
Fun fact: The New York Times used to preferentially hire hard-of-hearing Linotypists. Unbelievable racket down there. Mrs. Bloom was a copy girl back in the day, and told me about the yelling and hand-signaling.
There were elevator operators on Capitol Hill when I was there on an internship in 1987. Don’t know if they’re still on the job today.
No more scriveners these days, I think. Bartleby will have to retrained.
One of the Sporting Clay courses I frequent has a “trapper” that travels with the group. He hand loads the birds for each stand and throws them on command. He’s paid as part of the fee, but each shooter usually kinks in another $5.
$5 is a cheap kink.
Well, if you are going to include North Korea, then my WAG is all bets are off…they are frozen in time and so secretive that they could have any old, defunct (everywhere else) equipment or manual labor practices still going on.
I think anywhere BUT North Korea that switchboard operators are out pretty much defunct, though. There is no use having someone sit and manually connect physical network connections via a plug when electronic switching equipment can do it better and orders of magnitude faster. Doing a Google search, the only people listed as ‘switchboard operators’ these days are usually people acting as receptionists in one way or another…either for email or for voice calls coming into a central reception desk. But that’s not what an actual switchboard operator used to be, so I think this is a good candidate even using your criteria.
Sadly, I think buggy whip makers are still a thing, if only a niche thing. You can still get buggy whips and riding crops after all.
That’s just the problem: given that this planet still has all sorts of folks in various states of development (or impoverishment), it is really hard to think of any occupation that is well and truly “gone”. Reduced in numbers, existing only as odd niches, or only existing in really economically backwards places - sure, plenty of those. But totally “gone” is tough.
That’s a possible one.
I thought of another - the original "calculator’. A ‘calculator’ used to be a job title, for someone who spent all day toting up figures by hand, or using a mechanical aid like an abacus. Electronic calculators are now so cheap and ubiquitous that they may have completely eliminated this as a profession, even in the most backwards places.
Scrivener – lovely word IMO. An uncle of mine, who was a schoolteacher, wrote – long ago – for his schoolkids to perform, a play about Robin Hood and his doings – including of course, the highly-evil Sheriff of Nottingham. He included a part, for the Sheriff’s Scrivener; a rather timid clerkly character who accompanies the Sheriff and his band wherever they go, in order to write down a highly-edited version of law-enforcement’s proceedings. The Sheriff, being a total villain, bullies the Scrivener mercilessly, as he does all his underlings. At one point, the Scrivener messes up what he ought to be writing: Sheriff grabs the document from him, looks it over, and bellows: “Where the heck did you learn to scriven? This is terrible spelling, even for the Middle Ages !” Lame humour, maybe; but it has always cracked me up.
I use to hand paint maps. Oil on linen. One map could take weeks. They cost thousands of dollars.
Now I can spit out maps like that in minutes. But I still have a job as a GIS programmer/analyst.
No one hand sets type anymore, I suspect it’s sort of similar. But once type was set, thousands could be printed. Not so with these hand painted maps. Sadly, I don’t own one myself.
They still are, kind of. It’s only that now the containers of the same shape are made of plastic and called drums.
However it could be argued that the racetracks bookie is really better than buying electronic tickets because the bet taker calculates the odds and returns in his head…
Maybe coal rolling, or maybe it was the fuel in use.
A book on her says that they used diesel if that was all that was available.
Diesel ICE burn it at a high pressure… So we need to look else where for evidence of what happens when diesel is burnt at atmospheric pressure…
Black smoke results.Presumably not completely defunct but rare enough so that the name itself causes awe and wonder: Saggar Maker’s Bottom Knocker.
Ex-hot-type typesetter here.
I mean, I’ve always done it optically/digitally, but I’m no longer the hot type.
I’m not sure about the rest of the world but in America I don’t think there are any hangmen these days.
While we still execute people in some states it’s mostly lethal injections. I don’t there are too many people left whose occupations are pulling the switch to electrocute a convicted murderer, though there are doubtless retired ones.
Hanging is a legal method in Washington and New Hampshire. In WA, the inmate may choose that form. In NH, it’s listed as a legal backup method if others are not available. The last hanging took place in 1996. If I was on WA’s death row, I’d pick hanging over the others.
Electrocution is legal in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Oklahoma. The latter is backup method only while the others allow inmate choice. The last electrocution was in 2013. One should never choose this method unless ones goal is create permanent nightmares in the witnesses.)
(Last firing squad: 2010; last gassing: 1999.)
Being a child of the suburbs, I’ve only heard of one Eggman in the last 50 years. Sadly, gone since 1980 (Goo goo goo joob).
All right, I’m going.
The Eggman lives, in Orlando. Under a chicken, of course. At least if he wasn’t blown away today. I hear the storm is due to pass by around 8 O’Cluck.
When I was a kid, in the early '70s, our family had a “chicken man”.
One of my earliest memories was of hearing about this mysterious figure, who would arrive every Tuesday at 10:00 AM. I was never in at that time, because I was always in daycare or kindergarten.
One day, I was home with a cold, and it was Tuesday! The “chicken man” was coming! I was very excited!
Imagine my dismay when the “chicken man” turned out to be wrinkled old fellow in overalls with a cooler. According to my mother, when I set eyes on him I looked very sad, and said: “where are all his feathers?!”.
No “drown in a vat of wine” option? Sad.