Decades ago, the world didn’t just look different; it sounded different, too. We communicated, watched our favorite movies, and did mundane tasks using different devices, and as technology has progressed, so has the noise we hear every day. A smartphone buzzing on a table would have been an unfamiliar noise 20 years ago — and a lot of stuff we used back then has fallen silent today.
Take a listen down memory lane with these eight sounds that we don’t hear much anymore, from old-time internet accessories to vintage AV equipment.
Dial-Up Modem
Back in the early days of the internet, your connection worked through your landline phone. Instead of having your internet on most of the time, you had to deliberately connect by asking your computer to dial in. That started a telltale series of intense-sounding noises, beginning with a dialing sound and escalating into bouncing beep-boops and several pitches of static. This song-and-dance served a purpose: The sounds were the various complicated steps of computers trying to talk to one another using borrowed infrastructure.
Because the connection tied up your phone line, if you didn’t have a second line and somebody tried to call you, they’d get another sound you don’t hear too often nowadays …
Busy Signal
It’s now really easy to put someone on hold to answer another call. But back when nearly everyone had a landline, it was common to call someone and hear a series of beeps indicating that they were on another call. Call waiting eventually became available for nonbusiness landlines, but it still wasn’t as easy to switch over as it is on a smartphone, since there wasn’t any visual interface to guide you.
“You’ve Got Mail!”
America Online, better known as AOL, used to be America’s biggest internet provider, and was so ubiquitous in everyday culture that you didn’t have to be a subscriber to know what it sounded like to get an email via the service. A male voice semi-enthusiastically stating, “You’ve got mail!” was so well known that it even lent its name to an A-list rom-com.
“Accidentally Called a Fax Machine” Sound
Having to key in a number every time you called someone — as opposed to just finding someone in your contact list or making Siri call someone for you — meant that mistakes were inevitably made. Sometimes you’d read the wrong line of a business card, dial the wrong number, or just catch someone at the wrong time and get a screeching ringing sound, indicating that there was a fax machine on the other end.
TV Test Pattern Beep
If you still have TV service, there’s something on 24/7, even if it's infomercials. Years ago, however, channels would eventually pack it in for the night and display a test pattern — a series of colorful bars designed for calibrating a color TV or, on the other end, a camera. (Before color TVs, they looked much different.) This was often accompanied by an obnoxious long beep for calibrating audio.
Rewinding Tape Noise
From the 1970s until DVDs took over, most home video was on VHS tapes, which used a length of magnetic tape to store audio and video. Tape moved from one spool to the other as the video played, so if you wanted to go back to the beginning, you’d have to rewind it, which made a distinct whirring sound. The same thing applied to audiocassettes, although you could flip those over and play the other side to get back to square one.
Rotary Telephone Dials
When you dial a phone — even a landline — you’re typically pressing buttons, not actually dialing. Rotary telephones predate the touch-tone models most people are used to, and had an actual round dial, with different points corresponding to different numbers. To call someone, you had to turn the dial from each number, let go, and wait for the dial to return to the starting point before putting in the next digit. The rotation of the dial made a kind of rapid clicking sound.
Adding Machine Typing and Tape Sounds
If you needed to crunch some numbers on a calculator and required a record of your work, you used to need an adding machine — a calculator that printed out each equation and sum as you typed. Then you could use it as a receipt or go back and check your work. It made a distinct series of sounds: an electric typewriter-esque tapping as you entered the numbers, then a big crunch when you told it to add or subtract and it went to the next line.
It was a pretty common sight (and sound), especially in stores, in banks, and around tax time, until everybody had a computer in their pocket that could do the same thing.