Here is a fun one: film interpreter (解畫員 in Chinese/Cantonese)
Many many years ago, foreign films (primarily from Hollywood and in English?) were becoming popular in Hong Kong, but the general populace was either too illiterate or didn't speak or read English. Dubbing in Cantonese was inexistent back then (I guess the studios didn't distribute the films to the Hong Kong movie theatre chains or distributors with dialogue and sound effects on separate sound tracks, like they can today thanks to object-based encodings); subtitling was also useless or inexistent (maybe due to lack of technology, and also due to poor literacy levels). So the movie theatres hired film interpreters. The film interpreter would literally stand next to the silver screen during the screening, and verbally explain, in Cantonese, what the actors were saying or relevant English text displayed on screen.
Obviously that wasn't very scalable.
As technology progressed and as the population's literacy and education improved, it became feasible to put subtitles or dub the films in Cantonese. So the job of the film interpreter became obsolete.
Nowadays, the verb (解畫, to interprete a film) has been hijacked to mean something else: to defuse a misunderstanding that was a result of ambiguous or careless wordings in speech between two parties.
No voice-overs in HK? Dubbing is expensive, voice-over takes couple of hours to record and edit by two man team (dialogue reader and video engineer). In Poland all pirate VHS in the eighties/nineties had voice over funded by pirates themselves, often using same voice talent as legal distributors/TV stations (Everyone over 30 knows the voice of Tomasz Knapik).
As others have pointed out, there are still footmen, peddlers, Mudlarks (the recently published book about it is great by the way), nursemaids, troubadors and even arguably privateers working away in the World today. Their numbers may be fewer, their fortunes and status somewhat smaller, but they haven't disappered.
Some have also pointed out that in many cases the role exists, it's just the name and nature of the job that has changed slightly over time.
So then we come to the definition of "obsolete", and it's this which prevents me from editing the list and removing these: I would argue "no longer used" does not apply, and somebody else would argue they are "out of date", which arguably is true.
The community at Wikipedia is not a friendly one to engage with in such debates, IME - it's defensive, cliquey and closed. As a newcomer, there is a good chance I'd end up losing the argument. So, I don't edit Wikipedia. Ever.
What they have produced is in the whole, remarkable. However, lists like this make me sad as they remind me of the closed shop nature of being able to contribute.
Oddly, most of these still exist, but hve just chnged names. I must have clicked on a dozen, only to discover that they are just obsolete descriptors, and the roles live on. Which is interesting in a way I was not expecting.
I was a little surprised to see "line infantry" and "heavy infantry", considering that grunt troops are pretty much the modern successors of line infantry, and Rangers (for the US) and special forces are the modern successors of heavy infantry.
A knocker-up, sometimes known as a knocker-upper, was a profession in Britain and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution, when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable, and to as late as the beginning of the 1920s. A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time.
Knocker-ups are one of my favorites. Essentially human alarm clocks, they would tap on windows with a long stick to quietly wake the room’s inhabitants.
Sounds like an industry ripe for disruption. Crowd source that job with an app, and the primary money maker is all that data you get on people waking up. Use the block chain to confirm awakenings. Eventually the workers will be replaced by self driving cars, so we will invest heavily in deep learning. 100 million in seed money should be enough right?
Funny. Personally I was just imagining... Say for (wild) example you end up going to war against a neighboring city and all you have for air support is whatever's parked at your municipal airport. You think a bombardier is going to be an obsolete person at that point?
A tad bit more seriously, but still related: I do find lists like this suspect when viewed in terms of their resiliency over time vs. localized changes in circumstances.
I went on a guided tour in Australia early this year and the topic of occupations came up. Our tour guide said he used to be a cartographer and then switched to being a tour guide because "Google put him out of business". I honestly didn't know what a cartographer was so I googled it and it's someone who makes maps. I can see why he became a tour guide and why he blames Google. I wonder about all the other cartographers out there; perhaps cartographer should be on this list.
> A printer's devil was an apprentice in a printing establishment who performed a number of tasks, such as mixing tubs of ink and fetching type. Notable writers including Ambrose Bierce, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain served as printer's devils in their youth.
I thought it was principally sorting and setting type - the metal letters had to be physically arranged (mirror image) in a small rack and screwed into a tight frame. Tedious.
Galley slave https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_slave is not really a job, is it? Maybe the title should be copied from Wikipedia where it says "occupation" instead of "job".
The linked article itself contadicts the list by showing several examples of modern peddleers. Pretty much every large city in tge world is filled with them. That's a profession that will exists for as long as humanity does.
"Baby Farmer" is listed there as people that take on children solely for the purpose of making money. That's a common complaint about the foster care industry in the US. Not sure that one is obsolete just yet.
I think "obsolete" doesn't mean "extinct", but "not necessary anymore". Lamplighters are not necessary anymore. The kind of lamps that require one are obsolete and have usually been replaced by more modern lamps. But you can still hold on to an obsolete profession, item or technology out of nostalgia or tradition.
Anyway, sometimes unemployment rate could be misleading. For example, Cambodia's UR is 0.3% [1]. However beneath the impressive statistic lies a harsher reality of widespread near-unemployment, masked by the methodology: Anyone who works just one hour a week is considered employed.
The employed include people aged 15 and over who, during the reference week worked for one hour or more for pay, profit, commission or payment in kind, in a job or business or on a farm,” notes a 2013 ILO working paper on its methodology. Which means that anyone who has some kind of garden in the backyard, and if they go and grow some vegetables on their farmland, they will always be considered employed [2]
In developing countries the informal sector holds about 60% of the ecomony.
Bull, US employment rate at ~60.4% (2018) is down 4% from 2000 ~(64.4%). The sharp drop in the late from 63% in 07 to 58% in 2010 shows this is not a voluntary change.
Imagine an RPG game, set in magical industrial Victorian era with lots of these characters playing these roles... A broomsquire that you can upgrade to squire, or a Dahomey Amazon! Man...
Except for the social structures of the old clans, I like to think that the ninja traditions are alive and well in the espionage business of today, especially in black ops teams.
To use one required, for operations more complex than addition (e.g. division), an understanding of arithmetic algorithms - similar to those used in a CPU, except in decimal.
[+] [-] k_sze|6 years ago|reply
Many many years ago, foreign films (primarily from Hollywood and in English?) were becoming popular in Hong Kong, but the general populace was either too illiterate or didn't speak or read English. Dubbing in Cantonese was inexistent back then (I guess the studios didn't distribute the films to the Hong Kong movie theatre chains or distributors with dialogue and sound effects on separate sound tracks, like they can today thanks to object-based encodings); subtitling was also useless or inexistent (maybe due to lack of technology, and also due to poor literacy levels). So the movie theatres hired film interpreters. The film interpreter would literally stand next to the silver screen during the screening, and verbally explain, in Cantonese, what the actors were saying or relevant English text displayed on screen.
Obviously that wasn't very scalable.
As technology progressed and as the population's literacy and education improved, it became feasible to put subtitles or dub the films in Cantonese. So the job of the film interpreter became obsolete.
Nowadays, the verb (解畫, to interprete a film) has been hijacked to mean something else: to defuse a misunderstanding that was a result of ambiguous or careless wordings in speech between two parties.
[+] [-] keiferski|6 years ago|reply
The creative act of “dubbing” was itself part of the entertainment and often wasn’t actually true to the dialogue in the film.
Edit: found it. Uganda, not Nigeria.
https://www.economist.com/baobab/2012/11/02/coming-to-you-li...
[+] [-] rangibaby|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice-over_translation#In_Pola...
fancy, two readers, example (Total Recall): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7F0VEP3gw4
[+] [-] maxnoe|6 years ago|reply
It sometimes is hard to find cinemas that offer original voice.
[+] [-] Juliate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulRobinson|6 years ago|reply
As others have pointed out, there are still footmen, peddlers, Mudlarks (the recently published book about it is great by the way), nursemaids, troubadors and even arguably privateers working away in the World today. Their numbers may be fewer, their fortunes and status somewhat smaller, but they haven't disappered.
Some have also pointed out that in many cases the role exists, it's just the name and nature of the job that has changed slightly over time.
So then we come to the definition of "obsolete", and it's this which prevents me from editing the list and removing these: I would argue "no longer used" does not apply, and somebody else would argue they are "out of date", which arguably is true.
The community at Wikipedia is not a friendly one to engage with in such debates, IME - it's defensive, cliquey and closed. As a newcomer, there is a good chance I'd end up losing the argument. So, I don't edit Wikipedia. Ever.
What they have produced is in the whole, remarkable. However, lists like this make me sad as they remind me of the closed shop nature of being able to contribute.
[+] [-] Jamwinner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HenryKissinger|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cstrat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baxtr|6 years ago|reply
A knocker-up, sometimes known as a knocker-upper, was a profession in Britain and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution, when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable, and to as late as the beginning of the 1920s. A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time.
from Wikipedia
[+] [-] keiferski|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up
[+] [-] mxcrossb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_sze|6 years ago|reply
Turtles all the way down. Or maybe a rooster?
[+] [-] Chris2048|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TurkishPoptart|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LanceH|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themodelplumber|6 years ago|reply
A tad bit more seriously, but still related: I do find lists like this suspect when viewed in terms of their resiliency over time vs. localized changes in circumstances.
[+] [-] stock_toaster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|6 years ago|reply
What is that? Someone who separates linen fibers from flax seeds, a job quite literally replaced by the industrial revolution.
It makes me wonder if in another 200 years how many jobs will be looked at in the same way. Hopefully, a lot.
[+] [-] hbcondo714|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rahuldottech|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer%27s_devil
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etaioinshrdlu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aba_cz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|6 years ago|reply
Uh... peddlers still exist. Ever go to a holiday festival or parade? There's always peddlers slinging shiny, spinny, glowy, useless doo-dads.
Anyone who's lived in California has seen roadside peddlers trying to sell flowers, oranges, avocados, etc. Seems peddling is alive and well.
[+] [-] Anarch157a|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] louis8799|6 years ago|reply
Computer literally.
[+] [-] tyingq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsza|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_hermit
[+] [-] Qwertystop|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auiya|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkman
[+] [-] ragebol|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bilters|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptsneves|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BurningFrog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zkid18|6 years ago|reply
Anyway, sometimes unemployment rate could be misleading. For example, Cambodia's UR is 0.3% [1]. However beneath the impressive statistic lies a harsher reality of widespread near-unemployment, masked by the methodology: Anyone who works just one hour a week is considered employed.
The employed include people aged 15 and over who, during the reference week worked for one hour or more for pay, profit, commission or payment in kind, in a job or business or on a farm,” notes a 2013 ILO working paper on its methodology. Which means that anyone who has some kind of garden in the backyard, and if they go and grow some vegetables on their farmland, they will always be considered employed [2]
In developing countries the informal sector holds about 60% of the ecomony.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemploym...
[2]https://english.cambodiadaily.com/editors-choice/cambodias-l...
[+] [-] Retric|6 years ago|reply
https://www.statista.com/statistics/192398/employment-rate-i...
PS: It was higher every year from 1990 to 2008 showing just how bad things are right now.
[+] [-] rahuldottech|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bnshsysjab|6 years ago|reply
There’s plenty of busywork type jobs in Japan and Australia, from what I’ve seen.
[+] [-] undefined3840|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malkia|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon73044|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jemm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Anarch157a|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kolla|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonaldFisk|6 years ago|reply
To use one required, for operations more complex than addition (e.g. division), an understanding of arithmetic algorithms - similar to those used in a CPU, except in decimal.
[+] [-] sandGorgon|6 years ago|reply
Ramos Gin Fizz or the New Orleans Gin Fizz is a drink that needs to be shaken for a seriously long time to get its tall structure.
In the 1880s, there used to be "shaker boys" just for shaking the gin fizz - https://lettersandliquor.com/14-RAMOS-GIN-FIZZ-1880s