
1. Chimney-sweeps: "Someone who inspects and cleans chimneys." Now: Network administrators. They keep pathways clear and clean to avoid fires. By the way, a quick Google check found three or four real chimney-sweeps in my town of 80,000, so extinct is definitely a stretch.
2. Daguerreotypists: “These people were the pioneers of photography using the camera obscura, an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen.” Now: Camera Module Design Engineers at Apple and other companies. Their work allows me to stream video of my surroundings onto screens around the world from my iPhone.
3. Drover: “Someone who drives cattle or sheep.” Now: IT managers. Modern drovers exist in virtually all tech companies. They are the managers who have to organize engineers and their projects.
4. Hemp dressers: “Someone who worked in the linen industry separating the coarse parts of hemp.” Now: Senior software developers. The task of untangling messy code often falls into their laps.
5. Lapidaries: “An artist who collects precious gemstones and minerals and forms them into decorative items.” Now: Venture capitalists. They are always looking for the diamond in the rough and transforming it into the next "Big Thing" to decorate Wall Street.
6. Lathmaker: “Someone who works to set up, operate, or tend wood sawing.” Now: Lathe engineers. These are modern day, patent-touting lathmakers.
7. Match Makers: “Someone whose job consists of matching two people up, usually for the purpose of marriage.” Now: eHarmony, Match.com and, basically, every other online dating site’s employees.
8. Occultists: “People who study magic, alchemy, extra-sensory perception, astrology, spiritualism, and divination.” Now: Google engineers. What else do we call these inventors of self-driving cars, glasses that show images no one else can see and whatever else comes from Google’s labs?
9. Quarrymen: “A man who works in or manages a quarry, which is a type of open pit mine for extracting rocks and minerals.” Now: Open Source site operators. These operators manage sites where users extract code to serve as the rocks, minerals and foundation for their projects.
10. Shoe peg maker: “This is a traditional form of shoe-making using pegged construction.” Now: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. The obvious successor to a shoe peg maker may not be making pegged shoes, but certainly has selling shoes online pegged.
11. Salaeratus makers: “A person who makes baking soda. “ Now: Skyonic. This startup's SkyMine technology extracts and mineralizes carbon dioxide from industrial flue gas and turns it into baking soda and other products.
Image: Wikimedia Commons