A ‘kilogirl’ is a material unit that for a short time in the mid-twentieth century measured computer power, based on the women whose work underpinned the computers’ operations. A ‘kilogirl’ represents the computer power of 1,000 women doing one hours’ worth of work. The collective Superkilogirls researches the material infrastructures of computing, its entanglement with women’s labour, and how the historical marginalisation of these efforts reverberate now.

Superkilogirls tracks the contraction of computing infrastructures, from weaving machines, mainframes, and switchboards, to the invention of the transistor and related semiconductor industries. The project challenges narratives about computing’s seeming dematerialisation by centralising accounts about its globally fragmented labour. Superkilogirls works from a speculative framework, operating from the premise that the development of technology was not inevitable and emphasising the human scale of computing.

Superkilogirls is a collaboration between Camila Galaz (USA), Ana Meisel (UK) and Lua Vollaard (NL). Camila and Ana together host Our Friend the Computer, a podcast exploring alternative computing histories mostly gone unresearched in the western discourse of computing.

Credits –
Nieuwe Instituut
Digital Culture Grant

What if the Kilogirl had persevered as a unit of measurement?

And what if that labor had been valued?

Machinery, [...] operates only by means of associated labour, or labour in common. Hence the co-operative character of the labour-process is, in the latter case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument of labour itself.

– Karl Marx, Capital Volume One

She thinks about everything at once without making a mistake. No one has figured out how to keep her from doing this thinking while her hands and nerves also perform every delicate complex function of the work. this is not automatic or deadening. Try it sometime. Make your hands move quickly on the keys fast as you can, while you are thinking about: the layers, fossils. The idea that this machine she controls is simply layers of human work hours frozen in steel, tangled in tiny circuits, blinking out through lights like hot, red eyes.

– Karen Brodine, Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking, 1990

“Mend your speech a little,
Lest it may mar your fortune.”[1]
—Shakespeare

In the telecommunications industry's early years, before the widespread use of automatic dialing systems, the role of the switchboard operator was not just a job but a choreographed interaction between human and machine. In thinking through histories of technological labor, I spent April exploring the history of female switchboard operators on the United States’ east coast—particularly at the Bell Telephone Company from the 1910s to the 1940s. My interest in this topic has centered not only on the control exerted by the company but also on the spaces in which awareness and autonomy were able to exist for the operators, who were largely framed as components within a vast and meticulously tuned communication machine.

Bell's management of their operators—primarily young, middle-class white women selected for their specific demographic traits—was strategic and comprehensive. The working conditions and community cultures were superficially appealing and appeared to value and appreciate their staff. However, this was, in part, a tactic to attract and retain a specific type of worker deemed ideal for the company operations. The movements of these operators across the switchboards involved constant stretching and reaching, a physical toll that eventually necessitated the establishment of one of the first corporate medical departments in 1913. Any deviation to the established norms of the system—conceptualized as "noise" within the system by researcher Elinor Carmi[2]—was viewed as something that needed to be managed and corrected in order to maintain a seamless operational flow. There was also a fostering of self-regulation and mutual surveillance among operators through programs like "Hear Yourself as Others Hear You", which allowed operators to listen to and evaluate each other’s work.[3]

This control extended to their private time and internal mental lives. The company’s self-development program, "A Design for Living" developed by Dr. Theresa Boden, was introduced officially in 1939 as part of a comprehensive strategy to manage and optimize the lives of their female switchboard operators both at and outside of work. This program, lasting several weeks, was ostensibly designed to enrich the operators' lives, teaching them how to excel not just as employees but as models of societal ideals of womanhood. I managed to find a copy of the “A Design for Living” handbook, in a revised 1950 edition, whose topics include: conversation, better speech, reading, dress and grooming, etiquette, entertainment, home decoration, family and personal budgeting, travel and vacation planning, and hobbies. In-person classes taught by Group Leaders, and counseling services staffed by fellow operators, blurred the lines between support and surveillance. These programs were presented as perks of the job but fundamentally served the company's interest in maintaining a well-oiled and compliant workforce.

Both physical movement and speech were modulated through instruction and drills. In terms of speech, initially operators were scripted to ensure uniformity; however, after a dip in subscribers during the Great Depression and as competition with smaller companies using automatic dialing systems became stronger, there was a change in strategy. Operators were now encouraged to sound more personable and authentic, traits that automated systems could not replicate. This also led to the creation of the Information Service role, where operators transitioned to become sources of information and assistance. These information service operators were tasked with answering inquiries, providing phone numbers, and offering directory assistance, essentially acting as live, interactive databases. The slogan of Bell Telephone during this era (30s-50s) was “The Voice with a Smile”; operators were allowed personalities only insofar as these traits served the company's bottom line.

The physical tools and systems used for the job also began changing. Innovations like the introduction of updated switchboards and later, more sophisticated routing systems, were designed to reduce the physical strain and complexity of connecting calls. However, these enhancements came with increased expectations for productivity with operators expected to handle a higher volume of calls per shift while being monitored for speed and accuracy. These changes, alongside a lack of updated remuneration after World War II, contributed to the nationwide telephone strike in 1947, the largest walkout of women in U.S. history (using the clever slogan “The Voice with a Smile Will be Gone for A While”), which would lead Bell to accelerate its transition to automatic dialing systems. Interestingly, while the "A Design for Living" program had an element of unionization prevention by engaging the operators with continuous activities and providing a sense of fulfillment, it also inadvertently promoted solidarity among them. Encouraging the women to spend time together outside of work allowed them to forge stronger bonds and share personal experiences, which, in turn, strengthened their collective identity and camaraderie.

Bell maintained a labor-intensive approach longer than any other telecommunications company, demonstrating a clear preference for control over cost savings. The shift to automation only occurred when maintaining this control was no longer sustainable. Eventually the switchboards fell silent, signaling the end of an era for the women who had been pivotal to the growth of the industry. The dominance Bell once held over these operators became outdated, as did the detailed manuals, training protocols, and the methods of self-regulation, along with the mental and physical expertise the operators held. But this control had not disappeared; it had merely shifted to the mechanical parts of the machine the operators had once embodied.As we consider the shifting landscapes of labor and technology, we can see the legacy of female switchboard operators enduring in contemporary digital forms. Today's virtual assistants, such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, epitomize the fusion of automated technology with the personable nature historically attributed to female operators. These digital assistants perform a function akin to that of their human predecessors: they connect us to information and facilitate communication, yet they do so with the "smile" once mandated of switchboard operators, suggesting that even as technology advances, some societal expectations remain fixed. In this sense, the dialogue around labor and technology has evolved but the core issues remain: how do we value the human contribution within automated services, and what rights and protections are afforded to the unseen labor still present in these digital systems? As we increasingly incorporate technology into our daily lives, an awareness of these pasts could guide us towards a more equitable technological future.

Footnotes

1. A slight misquote of Shakespeare’s King Lear quoted in “A Design For Living” handbook, 1950, p25. The title of this essay is a modification of a chapter title from the same book.
2. This concept and much research on the topic is indebted to Elinor Carmi, particularly through her book “Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media”, Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2020
3. This system of control, including the incorporated element of “feedback” within the system, was a key influence on the creation of cybernetics.
* images by Camila Galaz including redrawn/reworked illustrations from “A Design For Living” handbook, 1950

Bibliography

• Birdsall, Carolyn & Carmi, Elinor. “Feminist avenues for listening in: amplifying silenced histories of media and communication.” Women's History Review, vol. 31, no.4, 2022
• Boden, Theresa, E. “A Design for Living.” Bell Telephone Magazine, Autumn, 1948.
• Boden, Theresa, E. A Design For Living: Program for Self-Development. American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1939, revised edition 1950.
• Boyer, Kate & England, Kim. “Gender, work and technology in the information workplace: from typewriters to ATMs.” Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 9, no. 3, 2006.
• Carmi, Elinor. “Taming Noisy Women.” Media History, 2015.
• Carmi, Elinor. Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media. Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2020.
• Lipartito, Kenneth. “When Women Were Switches: Technology, Work, and Gender in the Telephone Industry, 1890-1920.” The American Historical Review vol. 99, no. 4, 1994.
• New York Telephone Company. An Ideal Occupation for Young Women. Pamphlet, 191-.
• Prescott, Harold. M. “Towards a More Pleasing Service.” Bell Telephone Quarterly, April, 1940.
• Wyatt, Sally. “Feminism, Technology and the Information Society: Learning from the past, imagining the future.” Information, Communication & Society vol.11, no.1, 2008.

The website is 21 megabytes.

1 byte consists of eight binary digits (bits).

The term "digit" derives from having ten digits (Latin digiti, meaning fingers) on our hands, reflecting the ten symbols of the common base 10 numeral system, i.e. the decimal digits.

"Capitalists too, as the novelist Charles Dickens noted, liked to think of their workers as 'hands' only, preferring to forget they had stomachs and brains."

– David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, 2014

“In the factory, we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.” – Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1, Chapter 15. Penguin Books, 1976.

During the 17th century, much of Europe witnessed widespread uprisings by workers against the ribbon loom - a mechanised device used for weaving ribbons and decorative trimmings. This invention threatened traditional handweaving crafts, sparking fear among artisans who saw it as a direct challenge to their livelihoods and economic security. The ribbon loom, invented in Germany, was prohibited by authorities across Europe between 1629 and 1719 and even faced public destruction[1]. The widespread opposition to looms that impacted traditional weaving jobs was a political threat as much as a populist one, generating combativeness from workers. Cloth work, historically carried out by women, such as spinning and carding, was the first to be mechanised. In England, James Hargreaves initially kept the spinning jenny secret of producing yarn for his business, but as it followed the 1766 food riots and the falling price angered spinners, they destroyed his machines, forcing him to flee to Nottingham in 1768.

During the early modern period, Britain relied heavily on raw cotton, "the most important raw material of British industry,"[2] primarily sourced from outside the Empire, particularly India, the world's leading producer of cotton textiles under British colonial rule. Reflecting on the devastating impact of this exploitation, Lord William Bentinck, a former Governor-General of India, wrote in 1834: “The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India.” This colonised globalism, where Britain's textile industry relied on the exploitation of India’s resources and labour, foreshadowed modern outsourcing practices, including the transfer of large-scale data processing for artificial intelligence to India, where lower costs continue to drive such operations.[3]

The Industrial Revolution intensified this Early Modern hardship, as the power loom rendered skilled handweavers obsolete. The resulting unemployment, starvation, and social unrest led to the Luddite movement, where textile workers organised machine-breaking riots against factories and machinery they blamed for their difficulty. The government responded with military force and harsh penalties, enforcing the Frame Acts and suppressing the movement by the 1820s.

Huddersfield, once a hub of Luddite activity, was home to numerous mills that housed the workers central to the movement. Albion Mills, Alma Mill, Aspley Mills, Bradley Mill, Brick Factory/Fountain Mill, and Britannia Mill have all disappeared, leaving no evidence of their history or former presence. The town is home to Alan Brooke, a leading Luddite historian, and the Tolson Museum in Ravensknowle Hall, which showcases Luddite memorabilia. A standout piece is a hair tidy crafted by 23-year-old William Thorpe, a renowned Luddite from Huddersfield. Thorpe created this intricately crocheted piece, adorned with sewn-in hearts, while imprisoned in York Castle in 1813, awaiting trial for the murder of mill owner William Horsfall. On January 8th of that year, Thorpe was hanged and dissected alongside George Mellor and Thomas Smith. Made within the confines of his cell, the hair tidy is a reflection of the repetitive, dehumanising labour that had become second nature. Even awaiting execution, Thorpe’s muscle memory turned to creation, crafting a functional object as an act of quiet defiance. This small gesture of care amidst chaos reflected a life shaped by relentless toil, ending violently in his resistance to industrial oppression. Knitting and embroidery, common pastimes for prisoners, become here a materialisation of time, waiting, and resistance.

The Luddites’ organised militancy and direct action against industrial machinery are an important symbol of resistance as well as an immediate response to workers’ material conditions. Karl Marx captured this in Capital: “Since the introduction of machinery has the workman fought against the instrument of labour itself, the material embodiment of capital.” Initially, class consciousness manifested in indiscriminate machine-breaking riots, targeting all machinery within workhouses. However, the Luddites began strategically targeting machines in factories owned by obstinate mill owners (and, in cases like Thorpe's, the mill owners themselves), marking an early instance of class consciousness shaped by industrial machinery.

Machines can oppress, driving ordnance, dependency, labour displacement, environmental harm, biodiversity loss, and even extinction as seen in the case of Turnspit dogs. By exposing this "dead labour," they raise a critical question: does their introduction highlight societal divides by serving as tangible symbols of inequality? The Luddite movement illustrates these dynamics, linking resistance to machinery with broader social tensions and conflicts.

Among the Luddites were ex-soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars, skilled in organising and executing coordinated actions. Operating as a secret society, they planned their raids at night and recruited members through clandestine oaths, despite the fact that oath-taking was punishable by death. Armed with hammers crafted by Enoch and James Taylor – the same company that produced the very machinery they opposed – they carried out nighttime raids, smashing industrial machines in defiance. Disguised in women’s clothing to conceal their identities, they were celebrated as subversive working-class heroes of their time. This form of "camouflage drag" can be seen as a symbolic intersection between traditional roles of men and women. Historically invisible reproductive labour, such as care work, is now a major employment sector in the UK and US, spanning healthcare, education, food service, and insurance.[4] Yet, these roles are increasingly automated or outsourced, reflecting the “feminisation” of the proletariat, with many factory jobs filled by migrant workers.[5] Like housework before it, this hidden world of production remains largely ignored, perpetuating the invisibility of certain labour.

In contrast, the Luddites wanted to be as politically conspicuous as possible. They sent threatening letters, signed under the alias “King Ludd” or “General Ludd,” warning factory owners to dismantle their machinery or face destruction. Along with groups like the Jacobins and the Chartists, they posed one of the greatest internal threats to the English government. Their intimidating uprising prompted the government to devise new methods of suppression and Robert Peel’s establishment of the Metropolitan Police (MET) was partly aimed at quelling such populist revolts.[6]

The Luddites’ actions were a desperate attempt to resist the encroaching horrors of industrial capitalism and to preserve a way of life that was rapidly disappearing. While they opposed labour-replacing technologies that stripped them of their agency, they aimed to protect tools like handlooms which enabled more freedom and skill. Contrary to popular belief, the Luddites were not anti-technology. They were defenders of a balance between labour and tools that upheld the autonomy of the worker. The movement persisted throughout the Industrial Revolution, almost as if it were driven by a sense that life would never be the same again. Or by intuition that these macroinventions[7] would trigger a snowball effect, with machines continuously fueling further technological advancements. One of the machines they were breaking was the Jacquard loom, a device that laid the groundwork for modern binary technology. It’s punch card system, encoding patterns as holes or no holes, later inspired Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and the foundations of computer programming and digital logic.

In small family weaver’s cottages, such as the one at the Skelmanthorpe Textile Heritage Centre near Huddersfield, the loom typically dominated the upper floor, becoming an integral part of the home’s architecture and daily life. These cottages, common among weaving families, were designed to accommodate the handloom as the centrepiece of the household. Its massive presence shaped the structure and function of the home, often leaving children with no choice but to sleep in or around the loom. Daily routines revolved around relentless labour, with weavers working more than 12 hours a day in this confined and demanding environment. The woven cloths were typically sold directly from the doorstep to merchants, reinforcing the home’s dual role as both living space and workplace. The upper floor ceilings were designed to be high enough to accommodate the loom, with long rows of windows strategically placed to maximise natural light. A "taking-in” door, often now sealed, allowed wool to be brought into the loomshop and finished cloth to be removed.[8]

These homes, purpose-built centres of production, supported a mercantilist structure of family labour. Work was seasonal, involved the entire household, and allowed weavers to operate as skilled freelancers, maintaining control over their labour. Industrialisation fractured household production and a certain type of family unity while factory machines and Taylorist systems alienated and enraged workers. This, however, gave rise to a collective resistance and solidarity that the dispersed domestic industry could not achieve. It was only when they were thrown into the “dark Satanic Mills” (William Blake, And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time, 1808), that a new form of solidarity began to emerge.

As Brian Merchant explains in Blood in the Machine (2023), “In the 1800s, automation was not seen as inevitable, or even morally ambiguous. Working people felt it was wrong to use machines to ‘take another man’s bread.’” The Luddites' struggle was against the soulless machinery that reduced workers to mere extensions of capital. The term "Kilogirl" aptly captures this – a tongue-in-cheek measure of computational power that replaced human labour, reflecting technology's role in perpetuating the cycle of production and profit. These transitions highlight a recurring pattern: the tools of progress often displace the very workers who first wielded them. If innovation begs for a human cost, then what does progress mean?

– William Thorpe's hair tidy, crocheted right before his execution on the 8th of January 1813. Courtesy of the Tolson Museum in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England.

– Photo by Fred Hartley, date unknown. Courtesy of the Tolson Museum in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England.


Footnotes

1. Mehring, F. (1893). On historical materialism. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/mehring/1893/histmat/

2. Robbins, L. (1937). Economic planning and international order (p. 247). London: Macmillan.

3. CBS News. (2023). Labelers training AI say they’re overworked, underpaid, and exploited. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/labelers-training-ai-say-theyre-overworked-underpaid-and-exploited-60-minutes-transcript/

4. Fraser, N., & Jaeggi, R. (2024). Capitalism’s crisis of care: An exchange. Past & Present. Advance online publication

5. Birketts LLP. (2023, July 19). Women migrant workers. Retrieved from https://www.birketts.co.uk

6. Lyman, J. L. (1964). The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology & Police Science, 55(1), 141. Retrieved from https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5222&context=jclc

7. Crafts, N. F. R. (1995). Macroinventions, economic growth, and the 'Industrial Revolution' in Britain and France. The Economic History Review, 48(3), 443–461. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2598183

8. MyLearning. (n.d.). Domestic woollen industry and weaving in the Colne Valley. Retrieved from https://www.mylearning.org/stories/domestic-woollen-industry-and-weaving-in-the-colne-valley/1077

Bibliography

• Blake, W. (1808). "And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time"
• Birketts LLP. (2023, July 19). Women migrant workers. Retrieved from https://www.birketts.co.uk
• Crafts, N. F. R. (1995). Macroinventions, economic growth, and the 'Industrial Revolution' in Britain and France. The Economic History Review, 48(3), 443–461. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2598183
• Fraser, N., & Jaeggi, R. (2024). Capitalism’s crisis of care: An exchange. Past & Present. Advance online publication.
• Lyman, J. L. (1964). The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology & Police Science, 55(1), 141. Retrieved from https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5222&context=jclc
• Marx, K. (1976). Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1, Chapter 15, p. 548). Penguin Books.
• Mehring, F. (1893). On historical materialism. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/mehring/1893/histmat/
• Merchant, B. (2023). Blood in the Machine
• MyLearning. (n.d.). Domestic woollen industry and weaving in the Colne Valley. Retrieved from https://www.mylearning.org/stories/domestic-woollen-industry-and-weaving-in-the-colne-valley/1077
• Robbins, L. (1937). Economic planning and international order (p. 247). London: Macmillan.

A 1969 dedication brochure for Fairchild Semiconductor’s new Shiprock, USA facility shows the likeness of their semiconductors to Navajo woven fabrics. The original captions read:

The Talents of the Navajo people reach beyond imagination. A Navajo woman weaves a perfectly patterned rug without seeing the whole design until the rug is completed.

And:

A Fairchild 9040 integrated circuit is… just one of many different electronic devices made by the men and women who work at Fairchild Semiconductor Shiprock Facility. The 9040 is used in communications satellites like COMSAT.

What until now has passed for ‘civilisation’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.

– David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything