I can think of dozens of examples of jobs that don’t require as many people doing them because computers aid with the job tasks. Banks, for example, can get along with fewer tellers. Gas stations can get along with fewer employees now that we have pay at the pump. Managers can type their own letters instead of sending them to the typing pool or secretaries. But none of these jobs have gone away - there’s just fewer people doing them.
What jobs just don’t exist any more, having been totally replaced by computers?
Well, in the Manhattan Project, they had row after row of women “calculators” who did mathematical calculations by manipulating punched cards. I suspect similar techniques were used in the Enigma decoding process. I would guess that many engineering firms had departments whose only job was to run things through slide rules. Those jobs are completely gone.
Type setting and linotyping is pretty much obsolete.
I suspect there are very few draftsmen of the T-square and sharpened pencil variety left.
No i’d say computers have greatly diminished the number of telephone operators that are needed. Even after the invention of the rotary phone, operators were on hand for directory assistance and placing long -distance phone calls. Operators at private firms were on hand to “connect your call” (I can still remember, not so many years ago, maybe 25 years, calling my Dad and having a live operator ask for an extension). Electronic switches, which are essentialy computers, have made direct long distance dialing possible. The internet has made the convenience of 411 almost moot , and PBX systems such as Meridian (also essentially a computer) made the lady who said “How may I direct your call?” out of a job.
On a simillar note, many customer assistance operator’s job have been eliminated by computer: both from information available on the Internet as well as automated answering systems (e.g., “Press 1 for TechnoBlob help”).
Secretaries are not nearly as much in demand I think. In my office we all are expected to draft our own correspondence and I think that is something that would have been done by the secretary pool at one time.
About 15 years ago a friend of mine, when his son was getting to the pubescent nerd stage, asked if I had any instructions for using a slide rule. The boy had developed an interest in them and dug one up somewhere. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted.
Yeah, I had an old Pickett instruction manual I could give him.
Well, telephones used to need “switching” operators. I’m sure you’ve seen it in the movies – “Yes, Mr. Jones, I’ll connect you right away” and then plugging a wire from one place to another place on a big board.
Switching stations have completely eliminated the need for those people.
If the OP had been rephrased slightly, it probably would make the question easier to answer. Instead of, “What jobs have computers eliminated?” how about “What jobs have computers eliminated the need for?”
slide rules … that’s like saying that plate mail armor manufacturers still exist in small numbers today. They do, but only for movies and the SCA.
In fact, flint knappers still exist in small numbers. If we go by this sort of distinction, then we’d be hard pressed to find any occupation that’s ever totally vanished. Heck, we still have astrology.
