In 1911 a nearly penniless widow who called herself Katharine Gibbs sold her jewelry, scraped a $1,000 loan together, and bought a ramshackle “business school” in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, that taught typing and shorthand to young women seeking office jobs, one of the few lines of decently paying work for them a century ago. Gibbs didn’t know how to type or take dictation in shorthand herself at the time, but her older sister, Mary, did. She hired Mary to cover the teaching while she drummed up students.