Excerpt:
In the beginning there was the phone company — the brand-new Bell Telephone, to be precise. And there were nascent hackers. Of course in 1878 they weren't called hackers yet. Just practical jokers, teenage boys hired to run the switchboards who had an unfortunate predilection for disconnecting and misdirecting calls ("You're not my Cousin Mabel?! Operator! Who's that snickering on the line? Hello?"). Now you know why the first transcontinental communications network hired female operators.