The first female telephone operator begins her job, the name of a popular camera and film company is registered and a technology giant is formed… It all happened This Week in Tech History.
This week in 1878 – Emma Nutt became the world’s first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company. Before her, telephone operators were typically teenage boys. Many of them were seen as “rude” by phone customers, so women were chosen for their more refined demeanor.
1882 – Thomas Edison displayed the first practical electrical lighting system. The Pearl Street electric power station, Edison’s steam powered plant, began operating and successfully turned on the lights in a one square mile area of New York City.
1888 – The name Kodak was registered by George Eastman of Rochester, NY. The word Kodak is meaningless. Eastman chose the name because he believed it was impossible to mispronounce and was not similar to any other words.
And this week in 1998 – Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University. Before naming their search algorithm Google, it was known as “Backrub”