There’s a wonderful circularity there,” said Josh Lauer, an associate professor of media studies at the University of New Hampshire who is writing a book on the cultural history of the telephone.The job came to be occupied mostly by single, middle-class White women, often known as “Hello Girls.” The Bell System, known as Ma Bell, advertised its mostly female ranks of operators as servile and attentive – “The Voice with a Smile” – to attract and maintain customers.‘She’s your telephone operator’ The first telephone exchange took place in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.Telephone companies sought female operators who would project a “comfortable and genteel image to their customers,” Kenneth Lipartito, a professor of history at Florida International University, wrote in a 1994 paper “When Women Were Switches.” Companies rejected Black and ethnic workers with accents, and policies barred female operators from being married.In 1968, the Bell System changed the name of its information service to “directory assistance” because too many people were taking the name too literally."