After I graduated from high school in 1981, I worked for a while as a keypunch operator before going to college (the first time). We even had a punch card machine, which was phased out shortly after I started. By the mid 1980s, that department was phased out, and replaced by data entry; I was re-hired by that company a few years later and worked there during my first two years of my second (and finally successful) go-around at college.
I’m sure there are other people who have done similar things.
I have a few professional skills that are up there with buggy whip making and carving woodcuts, but I’d have to say none of my jobs-qua-jobs are obsolete. I have had one or two industries sort of disappear out from under me, though - I was in one at its peak, with 3-400 active players, that had started to collapse around the time I left and a few years later was only represented by sub-subdivisions of megacorps. My current field has evolved almost out of recognition, but perhaps no more so than, say, auto repair has in the last 30 years.
As part of several jobs I did just about everything there was related to punched cards. Keypunching, sorting, duplicating, imprinting, loading card readers. Some of the equipment was programmed with patch-boards, there aren’t many people left who know how to do that. My very first computer job was 9-track Tape Librarian, there can’t be many of those left. My very first job was working at a drive-in theater refreshment stand. There’s still a few left, for a long time there may be one kept open somewhere for nostalgia but eventually they will be no more.
I was a draftsman back when the work was done with a drafting table, T-square and templates. Hand lettered. Done in pencil, then traced over with India ink either directly onto the vellum or on a mylar overlay. Drafting still exists as a field of course, but bears almost no resemblance to it’s earlier incarnation. Kind of sad, as it was definitely an art.
I also worked for a time as a darkroom technician for a newspaper, developing and printing film that came in with the reporter’s stories. This was a smallish daly that didn’t hire photographers, just sent out cameras with the reporters and told them to take thier own pics. The reporters were all terrible photographers, but if a picture came out poorly it was always the fault of the darkroom. “Ya can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, fellas”…
In college I used to rent out the TVs in the local hospital to patients on a daily basis. Like a newspaper route, it was 1-2 hours a day, every day. I turned the TV on with a key if they paid, off if they didn’t. Occasionally I would troubleshoot by replacing the TV. The feed was from an antenna on the hospital roof.
Not I, but kaylasmom used to work in the radiology department at a local hospital, developing X-ray films. Occasionally a vet from the nearby racetrack would come in to have copies made of X-rays of racehorses.
Her position no longer exists (even at the meeting military hospital where she learned the trade).
There are a few design and architectural-type jobs involving pencils and paper and scissors and glue that I would have been terrible at, because I have clumsy and awkward physical dexterity at those kinds of things, so I never pursued them out of High School. I really regret that, because after they evolved into digital form I think I would’ve been really good at them. I realised my mistake far too late, unfortunately, and now I struggle to enter those Industries.
I owned/operated a courier service that ran exposed film from collection points like drug stores, Foto-mats, etc. to the developers, then took the developed pictures back to the places for pick up. Ran a chain of photo kiosks as well. We had the name Photo Hut long before That 70s Show.
I was a paper boy back in the early 80s. What a crappy job. Had to wake up before the sun came up, load heavy papers onto your bike, and deliver them house to house in the cold, rain, and snow. Back then people paid for their newspapers by paying the paper boy once a week when he came around to “collect”. So you had to find time to go to everyone on your route and shake them down for cash. You then reimbursed the paper company for all the papers you delivered and hoped like hell you had some left over to pay yourself. All at the ripe old age of 13.
I was an Plate freezer operator at Green Giant.
The food was put in plastic bags, the bags stuffed into a small box and sent down the line. I stood at the top of a cat walk inform of the plate freezers. When enough boxes were lined up in front of the opening I pushed a button that would push a row of boxes onto a plate, and push a row of boxes out the back side of the freezer. After getting 24 rows of product on the plate my job was to lift the stack of plates, closing two plates together. Continue to lift the stack until it latch the closed set one level up the lower the remaining stack exposing a new plate. Repeat the process 24 times until the whole pile was full at at the top. Then cycle the stack until the top plate was exposed at the opening and push worm product in and frozen out the back. In the time it took cycle through the stack the food was frozen solid. The plates had anhydrous NH3 flowing on the inside of them at a 5 inch vacuum.
If there are plate freezers still around by now they are fully automated. But no the food industry is mostly south of the boarder.
Reminds me of when I was about 11 and we’d go door to door asking to cut lawns. If you were lucky, someone wouldn’t have any kids (everyone had their kids cut their lawns back then) and you’d bag some money.
It was just about done when I started in the 1970s, but I worked in a few print shops and set type by hand, Monotype, and Linotype. And worked in instant print shops, running A.B. Dick presses (I’ve heard all the jokes, thanks) and pasted up newspapers using hot wax to stick the print in place. Dug a moat by hand, but that’s because the original house plan didn’t have a moat and when the morons decided to add one, we couldn’t use backhoes or Bobcats.
I had a job for several months in the 80s that certainly no longer exists. I was given a list of journal articles every morning via a primitive fax type machine. I’d go to the local university, find the journals in the archives, photocopy them and then send the papers to a place on the other side of the state via courier.
Of course, everything is digitized now so there is no need for this service.
My first job was Girl Friday. I’d go to the post office, make sure the urn had enough water and turn it on for morning tea, fill in for the girl on the switchboard (I think her job has gone as well). General helper-outer. I’m pretty sure no one does this stuff anymore.
My second job was stenographer. I can still take shorthand but have trouble deciphering it if I wait too long. No one does that job anymore, to my knowledge.
I’ve been a nurse for 40 years and can’t see that job dying before I do.