1. Rotary Dial Telephone
The formerly familiary swooosh as the caller rotated the dial clockwise to the “finger stop” and then the click-click-click as the dial returned counter-clockwise to the start position is now a novelty application that you can install on your iPhones for nostalgic yuks. Adolescents waiting in line nearby will wonder what the heck that sound is, while we older fogies will know you’re poking fun at us and our ancient ways.
2. Manual Typewriter
Manual typewriters had an entire subset of unique sounds that made them immediately identifiable…at one time. The keys clacked loudly as they struck the paper, the carriage lifted up with a distinct clunk when the shift key was employed, and then there was the ping of the bell warning you that you were nearing the end of the line. That meant you had to lift your left hand from the keyboard and swipe at the carriage return lever, which caused a sort of ziiiiip noise as you pushed the carriage back to the starting position.
3. Coffee Percolator
If steampunk had an aural definition, it would be the bloop-hissss of an old school coffee percolator.
4. Flash Cube
The loud rapid-fire click-clack of an Instamatic camera equipped with a flash cube was a common background sound at any social gathering in the 1960s. It was a technological breakthrough to be able to snap off four – count ‘em, four! – photos in rapid succession without having to pause and install a new flash bulb after every shot. Even back then your crunchy granola types were concerned with the amount of waste used flash cubes created, so it became a common holiday craft project to repurpose the used cubes into trendy Christmas tree ornaments.
5. TV Channel Selector
When announcers of yesteryear used to admonish viewers, “Don’t touch that dial!”, they were referring to the channel selector knobs found on TV sets. The standard TV dial went from 2 to 13, and you had to click on each number as you searched for one of the three channels that broadcast in your area. That meant a lot of clunk clunk-ing interspersed with the static-y sound of “snow” on the blank stations. Listen to this old Muntz after it’s first switched on and you’ll hear another antique sound, the soft buzzzz of the picture tube warming up.
6. Record Changer
Record changers allowed you to stack a selection of albums of 45s (seven-inch singles, not guns!) for your longer-term listening pleasure. Each record would make a soft slap sound as it dropped onto the turntable, a series of clicks followed as the remaining records adjusted into place and the tone arm swung over and lowered the needle into the outer grooves of the record. You’d hear the slightest scritch noise as the stylus settled just so into the vinyl and then (finally!) the music began.
7. Gas Station Driveway Bell
Back in the days when all gas stations were full-service, the thin black pneumatic hose that snaked across the pavement was as familiar as the fuel pumps. When vehicles drove over the hose, a loud bell ding-dinged! inside the station, alerting the attendant that he had another customer. You can hear one here and even order one for your home driveway if you really dislike your neighbors.
8. TV Station Sign-Off
Before infomercials were invented, television stations actually went off the air for a few hours each night. Some of us TV-holics experienced physical withdrawal symptoms when we heard the announcer intone, “We now conclude our broadcast day…” around 2AM or so. The format varied little from station to station across the country; first a few technical details were announced (broadcast frequency, physical address of the station, etc.), then a reading of “High Flight” followed by the National Anthem, and then the steady beeeeeeeeeeeeeep tone of the test pattern.
9. Cash Register
Those chunka-chunka push buttons were clumsy, but (unlike the fellow in this video) veteran cashiers could check you out just as fast with these old-style machines as their modern counterparts do with today’s scanners.
10. Film Projector
One of the jobs of the classroom A/V squad captain was to run the film projector on movie days. The rapid tick-tick-tick of the sprockets really was that loud and usually accompanied by shouts of “Turn it up!” and, of course, “Focus!”
11. Broken Record
Remember when you’d beg mom over and over for something and she’d finally yell, “You sound like a broken record!”? She wasn’t referring to pops or hisses, but the repetitive effect that happened when the needle got stuck and played the same few notes over and over and over again… like at the 1:00 mark of this clip:
If you’re not afraid of revealing your true age, let us know how many of these you remember from your past!
–brought to you by mental_floss!
The ratchet sound of pin-fed printers (along with the paper tear sound of removing the pin-hole edges)
The sound of the analog gasoline pumps
The sound of an audio cassette going into a tape player
The clicking/popping sounds whenever you closed or opened an older VCR
The sound of an old reel-to-reel tape player
The sound of rewinding an audiocassette tape (or VHS/Beta)
Shake it like a Polaroid folks! Hell, still remember the clatter of milk bottles being picked up, ice being dropped off and the knife sharpener man’s bell ringing. Oh yeah, and variant rings of the telephone on a party line (when party line meant something quite different! LOL).
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Some great memories! It is amazing how many sound cues from television (especially news sign-offs) I remember.
We still have a knife sharpener in my neighbourhood, don’t you? But I doubt anyone will take up the trade (well, the roaming the streets part) once he retires.
I worked at a “service” station and remember that bell. It was maddening during the early morning or evening rush hours. Also, as a small boy I remember chasing the ice man on a hot summer day to get the chips that came off when the tongs grabbed the ice.