I saw a post on tumblr a while back (that i can't find unfortunately) about how the automated system of telephones (the one that eventually extinguished the need for switchboard operators) was invented because some guy who owned a funeral home was mad because his wife's competitor was a operator and kept connecting the calls received for his funeral home to her husband's. So he found a way to connect the calls directly, just out of spite. I was wondering how truthful that is, or if it's just another fun anecdote with no accuracy whatsoever.
The man they were talking about was Almon Brown Strowger who patented the first really practical form of automatic telephone switching back in 1891.
Now it's true he was an undertaker- in Kansas City, Mo- and the tumblr story gets repeated in all the histories of telephony, but whether there is any primary source for it is unclear. It's usually qualified with "apparently" or "allegedly" or some such wording.