Obsolete Occupations Trivia Quiz

Answer: Elevators

In Latin, "elevate" means to lift or rise up. Thus, the elevator is a device that lifts people or goods from one height to another. Despite common belief, the elevator was not a 19th century industrial creation. The ancient Greeks and Romans, including the famed inventor/mathematician Archimedes, used a form of rope and pulley device to lift people and goods. The Versailles Palace included a "flying chair" device that was installed in the 1740s. Steam powered elevators were widely used for mining and agriculture in the early 19th Century. However, passenger elevator usage did not begin in earnest until after the 1852 invention of a safety system by Elisha Otis. Otis patented a brake system that would stop the elevator from crashing when a cable or support rope failed.

Elevator manufacturing and complexity increased to meet the demands of the high-rise building boom of the late 19th century. Beginning in the 1880s almost all buildings with more than seven floors included elevators. Automatic elevators did not become available until the 1930s or widely used until after World War II. Manual elevators required an operator to start the machine and stop the elevator at the appropriate height for the desired floor. Thousands of people were once employed as manual elevator operators. Even when automatic elevators became the norm, many buildings retained operators in the elevator carriage as a convenience. However, by the advent of the 21st century almost all buildings had been retrofitted with automatic elevators and the once familiar sight of a helpful elevator operator has become an oddity and anachronism.

Answer: Female gladiator

Yes, there were female gladiators who fought each other and animals as entertainment for the Roman masses. Apparently, the spread of female gladiators became so widespread by the 1st century AD that Emperor Tiberius issued a law banning the female relatives of Senators and other upper-class families from working as gladiatrices. Records indicate that the late 1st century Emperor Domitian regularly enjoyed gladiator matches between women and dwarves. In the early 3rd century, the use of women as gladiatrices was banned by Septimus Severus.

You may ask if the profession of gladiatrix is actually obsolete. Definitely the use of the term "gladiatrix" has become archaic. The qualifications for a Roman gladiatrix included the willingness to fight, risk injury and spill blood. There is also evidence gladiatrices were attractive and provided a form of sexual imagery for the mostly male spectators at gladiatorial events. Does this job criteria not sound suspiciously similar to the qualifications of a wrestling "diva' or MMA and boxing fighter of the modern era?

Answer: Pinsetter

Ten-pin bowling is a newer variant of a sport that has its roots in Egyptian games that were played as far back as 3200 BC. European immigrants moving to the New World brought with them versions of nine-pin bowling games. During the mid 19th century, many communities banned nine-pin alleys believing they were magnets for crime and gambling. Scholars believe that around 1840, clever bowling enthusiasts added the tenth pin as a way to get around the legal prohibition. Ten-pin bowling steadily grew in popularity during the next century, in particular after World War II when thousands of bowling centers were opened across the US and Canada. Since the 1980s, ten-pin bowling has expanded its popularity across the globe; but the number of bowling centers in the US has declined by over fifty percent.

During the 19th century and until the 1930s bowling centers required people to manually replace knocked down pins and return balls. A person, usually a younger boy, would stand at the end of the lane and clear away knocked over pins and "set" the ten pins back in the triangle shape of four rows. Balls were sent back to the player, and the process would begin again for the next frame. In 1936 semi-automatic pinsetters were introduced and the first fully automatic pinsetter and ball return system was installed in 1946. By the 1960s bowling equipment companies stopped making parts for manual lanes. A few manual lanes remain operational as curiosities, employing the occasional pinsetter but otherwise the job is now completely gone.

Answer: Street sweeper

The importance of street sweepers in large cities before the advent of automobiles and paved roads cannot be understated. During this period horses, and horse-drawn carriages served as a main mode of transportation. Where a combustion engine produces carbon wastes, the equine power produces manure waste. In 1896, New York City streets were used by over 100,000 horses per day. Each animal produced on average 7-15 kilos of manure daily. Thus, the streets of New York received a daily dose of over 1.2 million metric tons of waste. The essential responsibility of cleaning the streets fell to hordes of street sweepers. Thousands of mostly young men were employed in the business of using large brooms, buckets, and carts to sweep clean the streets before the roads were buried under a mountain of horse manure.

While mechanized street sweepers were first patented in the 1840s, it was not until the advent of the 20th century that machines began replacing human brush armies in earnest. In the late 1910s, the Elgin Sweeper Company began making automated street sweepers that effectively replaced human sweepers. As more roads were paved with asphalt and automobiles replaced horses, there was less manure on city streets. Many communities eliminated daily street cleaning. By the late 1920s, most cities in the US and Europe had replaced the job of street sweepers with trucks and modern automated street cleaners.

Answer: Typist

Movable type printing and printing presses had existed in Asia before Johannes Gutenberg developed his printing press in the 15th century. However, the personal typewriter did not become a saleable commercial business tool until the 1870s when it quickly became a requirement for industrialized commerce. Beginning in this period, the job of typist became a standard fixture in most enterprises. Over time, pools of predominately women were employed as stenographers and typists making edits and replacing handwritten material with easier to read typeset pages. In the 1930s, electric typewriters started to replace manual versions allowing for even more efficiency pooled typing centers. The speed and accuracy of the typist made them an invaluable business resource.

However, the introduction of the word processor in the 1970s started the decline of the typing pool profession. Word processors stored the text of a document and allowed the typist to edit or change the page. As greater stored memory and portability were added to the processor the more a writer could both create and type their work. When even more powerful and affordable personal computers became the standard in the 1990s, the need for large number of typists reduced. Professional typists remain in the workforce; however, their percentage of the working population continues to dwindle and they increasingly also work as administrators.

Answer: Lamplighter

A chandler is a maker or seller of candles and soap. Chandlers and candles were an important source of light in pre-electric times. However, the advent of electric light did not eliminate the need for candles. Prior to the introduction of electric street lights, communities employed people to light candle or gas lamps that served as street lights and then "snuff out" or turn off the individual lamps in the morning. By the dawn of the 20th century, the need for lamplighters had been all but eliminated. In the 21st Century lamplighters are a creature of antique shows and museums.

Even before the electrification of the modern city the advance of technology eroded the need for lamplighters. The first public gaslight systems appeared in the 1800s. The most common lamplighters were men or young boys who used a long pole or ladder to light and shut off the lamp. During the late 19th Century clock lighters were developed. The clock lighter used a mechanical device to start and stop the gas lamp at prescribed times. As clock lighters replaced manual lamps, fewer lamplighters were needed starting the trend towards obsolescence.

Answer: Coal stoker

Archeologists believe coal has been used as a source of fuel for at least six thousand years. Evidence indicates that the Chinese built large smelting operations using coal to heat copper and other metals over 3,500 years ago. Coal is a plentiful if non-renewable resource formed from the effect of tremendous pressure on carbon materials. One of the important advancements in the use of coal as a fuel was the development of an efficient steam powered engine by Scottish engineer James Watt in 1781. Steam powered locomotives and ships were in turn developed and put to general use in the early 19th century. Coal powered steam engines fueled much of the development of the railroads and the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.

A coal stoker (also called a fireman) manually fed the rocks of coal into the furnace (fire box) that produced the steam that fueled the locomotives engine. Tens of thousands of coal stokers worked across the globe lifting and shoveling coal into trains, steamships, and factory boilers. By the 1900s, steam locomotives had reached the speed and size limit that a coal stoker could create by hand, spurring the invention of mechanical coal stokers in 1905. New engines were built to accommodate the mechanical stokers and phased out the human coal stokers. By the 1920s most steam locomotives had replaced the humans with machine stokers. Coal stokers can still be found in lesser industrialized areas where steam engines and boilers are stoked by hand.

Answer: Elephant trainer

In the 19th century, elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses were grouped together in a taxonomical order called pachydermata or "thick-skinned". The animals have since been reclassified as more accurate evolutionary and genetic data was developed. Nonetheless, pachyderm remains as a nickname for the elephant. The large Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) has been domesticated and used as working animals for over 3000 years. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the fascination with elephants in Europe and North America led to large numbers of elephants being displayed in zoos and trained to perform in traveling shows or circuses.

Elephant handlers and trainers work with the animals to create the performance art that so captivates children and adults alike. During the latter part of the 20th century, the training and care of elephants in circuses increasingly came under scrutiny by animal rights and humane treatment advocates. Many communities in Europe and North America passed ordinances that refused business licenses to circuses that included elephant acts. Whether related to the protests or otherwise, in March 2015, Ringling Brothers joined the growing list of circuses that ceased including elephants in their shows.

Answer: Better in-home refrigeration

For centuries, individuals and collective groups owned animals and obtained milk fresh from the source. As urbanization spread, fewer people had the space or time to maintain dairy animals. Commercial dairies sprang up to meet the demand for milk products in the urban environment. The dissemination and adoption of pasteurization techniques in the late 19th century improved the safety of commercial dairy products, but did little to decrease spoliation from high temperatures. Well into the later part of the 20th century a substantial majority of families received daily deliveries of dairy products.

In the 19th Century, milkmen pulled horse drawn carts to deliver their products. Even when easily stored glass bottles and automobiles replaced horse-drawn carriages, the lack of reliable refrigeration required most homes to retain a daily delivery by the milkman. However by the 1960s, reliable electric in-home refrigeration reduced the need for regular dairy deliveries by prolonging the products shelf-life. The trend towards fewer home deliveries was embraced by dairies. The dairies gladly cut the added cost of home delivery and replaced the milkman with more economical, centralized deliveries to supermarkets and grocery stores. Even a renaissance of in-home delivery of food goods bought through internet orders has not revived the venerable job of the milkman.

Answer: Resurrectionist

Until the mid 19th century, very few human cadavers were made available for scientists to study. The shortness of supply was due in part to fears of contamination from disease as well as religious objections over how to properly respect the dead. Criminals and street deaths made up the bulk of legitimate bodies available for study. Scientists augmented their supply of cadavers by paying "resurrectionists" to obtain fresh bodies from the graves of the recently deceased and allow them to be given a second "life" in medical experiments.

Contrary to popular belief, body snatching was not explicitly illegal in most places. For the most part, European and American laws defined a corpse as a type of property that could neither be owned nor stolen. Thus, the taking of a dead body was not a theft. The entering of the cemetery was a form of trespassing and damaging the coffin or grave site was vandalism, but the taking of the body was not a crime. Thus, police rarely cared about the resurrectionists' activities and when a body snatcher was caught the penalties were usually a fine or a public whipping. After England legalized the use of donated or unclaimed bodies for autopsy and research as part of the Anatomy Act 1832, the need for resurrectionists started to dwindle.