THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PHOTO ARCHIVE • FRAMED PRINTS • STOCK IMAGES

January 27, 1959. Washington, D.C. "Women working at the U.S. Capitol switchboard. An average of 50,000 calls are placed through the board daily." Photo by Marion Trikosko for U.S. News & World Report. View full size.

Circa 1921 in New York, the British pianist and conductor Ethel Leginska, last seen here. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.

June 1943. Washington, D.C. "Muriel Pare, a switching clerk at the Western Union telegraph office." Old-school texting, shot by Esther Bubley. View full size.

Circa 1962. "Dulles International Airport, Chantilly, Virginia, 1958-63. Eero Saarinen, architect. Control tower interior." Note the "mobile lounge" near the jet. Medium format negative by Balthazar Korab. View full size.

December 30, 1929. "Dr. K.C. Dickinson, chief of the Heat and Power Division of the Bureau of Standards, and the control room of the new aircraft engine testing laboratory at Arlington, Virginia. Here all engines for use on licensed airplanes are to be tested. The control room and the room in which the engines are mounted are heavily reinforced with concrete to prevent flying engine parts striking the observers." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

January 1943. "Freight operations on the Indiana Harbor Belt railroad between Chicago and Hammond, Indiana. The engine crew, engineer and fireman report at the roundhouse office to be assigned their engine and given orders for the day. The cylinder at the left is the pool board; it lists the names of the men and the order and shift in which they will work." Photo by Jack Delano. View full size.

      So many of you guessed correctly on this one that we're not going to wait till tomorrow for the answer -- the lady's job is: Telegram gummer. Original caption for the photo, taken by Esther Bubley: "June 1943. Miss Kathleen McCarthy, a Western Union teleprinter operator, gumming telegraph messages."

The year is 1943 and the place is Washington, D.C. What is this girl doing? (Hint: Hundreds if not thousands of people had the same job over the course of many years.) Check back on Sunday for the answer. View full size.

        UPDATE: This is Dr. William C. Fowler, "health officer of Washington, D.C.," probably in 1924.

May-June 1930. Washington, D.C. "Man with radio." Or is it the other way around? Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "Standard Engraving Co. big camera." Specifically, The Levy Process Camera. National Photo glass negative. View full size.

April 1953. "Comedians Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca posed in humorous situations with air conditioning units. Includes Caesar dressed in his 'professor' costume and Coca dressed as a mechanic, looking at a diagram of a cooling system." From photos by Arthur Rothstein and John Vachon for the Look magazine assignment "Air Conditioning -- How It Works." View full size.

"Fleetwood television circa 1960." Studio of Gordon Burt, Wellington, New Zealand. We don't guess this would stream Amazon or Netflix. View full size.

June 1924. Washington, D.C. "Carl W. Mitman, Curator of Engineering, U.S. National Museum [Smithsonian Institution], holding what is believed to be the first radio tube, made in 1898 by D. McFarlan Moore of New York. Radio waves emanating from this tube ignited a bomb a city block away and blew up a miniature of the Battleship Maine." Harris & Ewing glass plate. View full size.

June 1924. Washington, D.C. "Radio nut -- this set with everything necessary for receiving music and speech by radio has been put into a coconut shell. It was built by H. Zamora, a native of Manila, Philippine Islands." Marketing suggests we call this the iNut. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

Washington, D.C., 1926. "Dancers -- chorus girl using electric massage vibrator." Well, um, okay. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

1957. "Robert and Norma Norton of Houston, Texas, with their family, illustrating life before and after having the house air-conditioned. Includes photos of the family at a drive-in restaurant having cool air piped into their car" -- a Cadillac sedan that already has air conditioning. Photo by Jim Hansen for the Look magazine article "How the Nortons Beat the Heat." View full size.