Jobs nearly gone

These 10 jobs are almost gone. Do you remember them?

When businesses are forced to shut down or completely change the way they operate as technology moves forward, pieces of everyday life are left behind. Not only does this affect old traditions that were attached to those businesses, but also the people who were linked to these industries. There was a time when your milk was delivered by the milkman, or when, to make a call, you had to speak to a telephone operator. Let’s take a trip to the past and see some jobs that had to adapt, and others that simply disappeared over time.

Going to the supermarket or the convenience store when you need dairy products is what most of us do, but life was a little different throughout much of the 20th century, when refrigerators weren’t as common, and grocery stores weren't as big. If you wanted milk, you had to call the milkman.

The milkman was a trusted member of every community, and his job was to deliver fresh milk directly to customers early in the morning several days a week. People would leave their empty bottles at their doorstep, and sometime in the morning, after some familiar glass bottles clinking, the milkman would have replaced them.

Many people would remember the delivery boy on his bike and his canvas bag full of newspapers. If you were a teenager looking to make some extra cash during most of the 20th century, being a part-time newspaper delivery boy was a great choice.

Getting the newspaper at your doorstep used to be essential, so these kids carried a lot of responsibility. The newspaper was, for the vast majority of people, the primary source of reliable information. But the job, as it is traditionally remembered, is almost completely gone due to the rise of the digital era.

In a world where cell phones can do everything from calling your kids and texting to streaming a movie anywhere, thinking about the important role telephone operators played feels so far away in time. Making a call in the late 19th century and most of the 20th century was nothing like today.

Telephone operators were responsible for manually connecting different calls by plugging cables into switchboards in order to help callers reach whoever they were trying to speak to. They were the human link that made the entire system work and enabled communication across cities, states, and countries.

When, in order to watch a movie we didn’t physically own, we had to rent it, video store clerks were necessary. But their job was much more than just ringing you up. They would recommend movies for the family and always keep you up to date about new releases. Sometimes you could even show up and tell them what type of film you liked, and they would give you some advice on what to rent. With the downfall of video rental stores, most of these positions disappeared.

Before E-ZPass and cashless tolling, we would have to fully stop at highway toll plazas, roll down the window, have a little chat with the toll collector, and hand him cash to continue traveling. But besides charging you, toll collectors were very helpful when GPS and the internet weren’t a thing, as they often served as the first point of contact when you needed directions or some sort of assistance.

Once states modernized their highways, these jobs were gradually removed.

Planning your vacations looked very different a few decades ago. Typically, you would meet up with your travel agent, and they would help you with almost every detail of your trip. People didn’t have the internet and websites where they could handle all of this themselves as easily as it is today, so the travel agents booked flights, hotels, cruises, rental cars, everything you can think of.

They were essential for a well-organized trip and helped make things much simpler. You can still find some traditional travel agents, though it is not nearly as common as it used to be.

Operating an elevator now involves simply walking into it and pressing a button. But until the 1950s and part of the 1960s, elevators were a lot more complicated, and you needed specific skills to use them. Part of the common experience of using an elevator was greeting the operator and telling them where you were going, so they could make sure you had a safe ride to your floor. They would often wear smart uniforms and be very courteous with passengers.

How good or bad your experience at the movies was depended a lot on the projectionist. When there were no digital files, the projectionists were the ones responsible for operating the film projectors — but this involved many more tasks than just hitting "play."

Projectionists loaded large reels of film and had to constantly monitor the equipment, swap reels when necessary, make sure the movie was focused, the sound synchronized, and that it played smoothly from beginning to end. After theatres moved away from 35mm film projectors to digital ones, the need for specialized projectionists declined significantly.

Without typesetters, the printing industry couldn’t function. When computers hadn’t yet revolutionized the communications business, typesetters were the ones arranging individual metal letters in order to prepare text for printing: newspapers, magazines, books, advertisements, etc.

Typesetters had to be skilled to know how to organize the entire layout of a page to make it accurate and appealing for readers. And even the smallest typo could mean a lot of extra work to fix it by hand.

The term "human computer" may sound a little odd, but before we had computers as we know them now, companies would hire very smart mathematicians to perform complex calculations by hand — using pencil and paper!

The tasks they carried out were essential to science, playing a crucial role in many of the 20th century’s greatest achievements, like the Space Race. Human computers working for NASA were responsible for calculating everything from rocket trajectories to spacecraft orbits.

Linguistic smothies

Twirling, as in twisting and whirling? 10 common portmanteaus

We all know that brunch means breakfast plus lunch, or that Eurasia is used to refer to the connected European and Asian continents. But did you know that words like twirl, smog, or Texarkana are in the same category of portmanteaus or blend words?

Portmanteaus (from the French porte-manteau, ‘cloak-carrier’, a suitcase that opens in two equal parts) are terms formed by combining two or more words, their sounds, or their meanings. They were named by Lewis Carrol (the one from Alice in Wonderland) to explain the logic behind some odd words in his poem Jabberwocky: like a porte-manteau that you open in two parts, portmanteaus are opened to reveal two meanings. Let’s explore some common portmanteaus (and also some that are false).

This word is used to talk about anything that spins or rotates, like someone doing a pirouette or moving their thumbs around each other. It is a term common in everyday language, but did you know it’s a blend of two words?

Yes, twirl comes from combining twist and whirl, both in sound and meaning. A twirl, then, is a rotation (twist) that happens rapidly (whirl). Something to think about the next time you find yourself twirling your thumbs.

The word ‘popsicle’ was originally the name of an ice pop brand started by Frank Epperson, who forgot a bucket of powdered lemonade on his porch and found it frozen the next morning. But how did the word ‘popsicle’ come to be?

This treat was originally called the "Epsicle ice pop", a combination of Epperson and icicle. Allegedly, Frank’s children started calling it a ‘popsicle’ (pop + icicle) and insisted the name be changed. In time, the brand became so popular that it became the usual term for any ice pop.

If you ever find yourself near the Texas-Arkansas border, you might find a city called Texarkana. In fact, you might find two cities called Texarkana, one in each state, both in the Texarkana Metropolitan Area.

It’s not clear who named them, but everyone agrees that Texarkana is a portmanteau for Texas-Arkansas-Louisiana. Both cities claim to have the same birth date, but we can debunk this: Arkansan Texarkana was founded a year before Texan Texarkana.

First of all, what is a contrail? Contrails are the line-shaped clouds left by aircraft, missiles, or rockets as a result of engine exhaust vapor combining with low temperatures. The vapor of the engines condenses when it contacts the cold atmosphere, leaving a trail, so condensation + trail: contrail.

Sadly for couch potatoes everywhere, it is a proven fact that exercise makes you feel good. This is because, during physical exercise, our brain creates endorphins, which work as painkillers and mood boosters.

Why are these natural painkillers called this way? You might remember the word morphine, the name of a common opiate analgesic. Endorphins are endogenous, meaning they are created by our organism. Combine this word with an old spelling of morphine, endogenous + morphin: endorphin.

Any sitcom fan might tell you that the appeal of the genre is not about the narrative arcs but the funny situations the characters find themselves in.

This comedic format, originally produced for radio, was first called situational comedy. With time, it was combined into a portmanteau, situational + comedy: sitcom.

Let’s have a look at a false portmanteau. For centuries before sugar was brought to Europe, parsnips were used as a sweetener. Ancient Romans called them pastinaca, now part of their scientific name (pastinaca sativa). How did they come to be called parsnips?

It is a widespread belief that parsnip is a portmanteau for parsley + turnip, since parsnip leaves look similar to parsley, but this is not true. In Old French, parsnips were called pasnaie, a word that Old English adopted as pasnepe. The ending -nepe meant turnip, so in time, pasnepe evolved into parsnip. So, not a blended word, but one that you will find in many portmanteau lists.

Being electrocuted is not a pleasant experience, and the origins of the word are as gruesome as the thing described. In the late 19th Century, the state of New York adopted the electric shock as the standard form of capital punishment. Newspapers covering the first execution by this method mixed the words electric + execution, coining the portmanteau electrocution.

Lacking a judicial term to describe accidental deaths caused by electricity, electrocution came to be used for all incidents involving an electric shock.

Air pollution is an unfortunate reality in our current world, and words like smog are a byproduct of these environmental issues. The city of London has suffered from bad air quality and fog for many centuries, an issue only worsened by smoke during the Industrial Revolution.

This phenomenon, also called pea soup fog, eventually became known as smog, a portmanteau of smoke + fog. The term not only describes the greyish color associated with it, but also the smell produced by chemical contaminants.

Let’s end our list with a portmanteau nearly as old as the profession it names. In the English language, the word shepherd is recorded as early as the 12th Century, though it had been in use for many centuries before that. Middle English sceepherde comes from Old English scēaphyrde, a portmanteau for scēap (sheep) + hierde (herdsman, someone who keeps domesticated animals).

The original term was only used for animal keepers, but eventually gained the added meaning of ‘leader’ or ‘guide’. Lewis Carroll might have named portmanteaus in the 19th Century, but they have existed since the dawn of time.