Keypunch Operator

Survey Draughtsman. Back in 1970 I earned excellent wages working for a resort home developper based on my ability to take survey team books, close their traverses, and reduce the data to elevation points. Whereupon I would draught, by hand, in ink, a topographic map of the area as it existed.

The next step was to calculate the volume of ‘spare’ soil available and suggest a better topographic arrangement for subsequent landscaping. It’s all done by computer now, in a few seconds.

When I was a child, in what then was still the cotton mill region of South Lancashire, I occasionally, if I was up very early, saw men carrying long (about 12’), slightly flexible pole, with well-padded ends.  Their job was to tap on the second-floor bedroom windows of families who had paid for their services, waking the occupants.  The occupation, which presumably pre-dated the alarm clock, helped people get to work on time.  I assume that at one time it was a widespread profession, because I saw it in action in several areas of North Manchester in the mid-50’s, though I doubt that it survived into the 60’s.

Practitioners of the profession were known as knockers-up.  True.  http://www.sparththenandnow.org.uk/pic/333/421.jpg

When I was a child some of the stores had a cashier who would sit in a wooden booth with bars around it.  In some systems, cannisters with payments would be sent by a spring-loaded handle, spinning across the store on a complicated system of high wires to the cashier and change and receipts returned by the same route.  Other systems appeared to be hydralic.

My recollection is of Foyles Bookshop having such an arrangement until relatively recently [they certainly had the cashiers in booths], but as for the high wire system I can’t be absolutely certain.

I remember Foyle’s and Affleck & Brown’s department store in Manchester having the hydraulic system, which fascinated me as a child, Pageantmaster.  I don’t know whether I actually saw the suspended wire system, which could only have worked in a relatively small area, or whether my memory is of seeing it in a comedy sketch of the period, which may well be the case.  In the 60’s Foyle’s was notoriously infuriating to use (their practice of hiring as assistants foreign students with varying degrees of competence in the English language didn’t help either).  They were a target of “Private Eye”,  which lampooned them as “Foils”.

Soviet Russian food stores had an un-mechanical, but incredibly infuriating - given the time you had to queue at any counter - system.  You stood in line at the food counter to select what you needed;  placed you order and were given a bill;  moved to the cashier’s desk and stood in a second line to pay for the goods and then, receipt in hand, returned to the back of the original line, to wait to your turn to present proof of purchase and collect your goods.

#5 Lapinbizarre
The service in Foyles was truly awful and unbelievably slow.  I believe they were some of the worst paying employers.  However their book selection was fantastic.

Oddly, the overhead wire system did work over quite some distance.  The brass cannister projectiles hurtled off at great speed across the high wires and only came to a halt when stopped at the buffers at the destination with a great crash.  It was fascinating.

I managed to find an entire website devoted to these things

Fascinating, Pageantmaster.  Thanks.  Re my first post above, I found a web post indicating that at least one knocker-up was still in business, in Stockport, in the early 70’s.

Guess what—they still have Lectors in Cuba, Nicaragua and Honduras.

Few “soda jerks” in drug stores left, because few soda fountains left.  But that was a fun job.