My Sisters Telegraphic Women in the Telegraph Office, 1846-1950

In the mid-nineteenth century, women entered a challenging, competitive technological field--the telegraph industry. They competed directly with men, demanding & occasionally getting equal pay. Women telegraphers comprised a subculture of technically educated workers whose skills, mobility, & independence set them apart from their contemporaries. My Sisters Telegraphic is an accessible & fascinating study designed to fill in the missing history of women telegraph operators--their work, their daily lives, their workplace issues--by using nontraditional sources, including the telegraphers' trade journals, company records, & oral & written histories of the operators themselves. It includes an analysis of "telegraph romance," a largely forgotten genre of popular literature that grew up around the women operators & their work. Thomas C. Jepsen demonstrates the many ways that the telegraphy of the nineteenth century & the work of women in these technical fields anticipate the computer service industry of today, from the translation of English language into machine-readable code to the gender-neutral aspect of the "cyberspace" they inhabited.Jepsen, Thomas C. is the author of 'My Sisters Telegraphic Women in the Telegraph Office, 1846-1950' with ISBN 9780821413432 and ISBN 0821413430.