21–30 of 37 posts
How about the sound of children playing outside? The sound of a baseball popping into a well-worn leather mitt still exists, but is becoming awfully rare. It ain't tech, but it's a byproduct of tech.
It's at least as much a byproduct of bad city planning and car-centric design, I'd say.
The sounds of the analog telephone system: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f63uCpov5Lc
I can remember that when I was a kid, once you started dialing, the phone would go silent--almost. What you would actually hear was hiss, ghostly clicks now and then, and, occasionally, very quietly, down near the noise floor, short bursts of tones - beep boop boop beep boop beep!
I learned about blueboxes and the like later (in what were histories by then) and I know what I was hearing was some kind of crosstalk, but I never found out whether the tones were MF tones (one telco switch signaling to another to set up the call, in the voice band, but just before the phones on either end were patched into the circuit) or (similar, but different) DTMF tones from modems and fax machines on the local circuit. (I vaguely remember occasionally hearing tentative tones like from a real person pressing buttons.)
All the electromechanical hacks from the midcentury systems that were sometimes still in place in the 80s and even 90s are fascinating -- the earliest direct dial systems had to set up the connection digit by digit because they had no memory. Later they invented systems that could remember some of the digits by temporarily connecting your circuit to a literal mechanical stepper on the telco end that would replay those digits to the next switch down the line (and then disconnect) once you had dialed enough digits to fill it up.
I can remember knowing whether the TV had been turned off or was just on mute (with no video input) well into the 90s just by the sound.
Anyone else miss the sound from old stepper motor hard drives? Like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy3uWRuQXl0#t=4m30s I've been tempted to write something the monitors kernel io stats and softly beeps at me, but maybe those days should just stay behind us...
I have one that still works, but I'll probably live to regret leaving our 68k Mac on 24x7 for like a year in order to get a tiny amount of distributed.net RC5-64 hash rate.
My favorite endangered sound is probably too subtle for the museum and, alas, one I can no longer hear anyway: the 15625 Hz squeal of an NTSC cathode ray tube TV. I can remember knowing whether the TV had been turned off or was just on mute (with no video input) well into the 90s just by the sound.
I assume if we had a future hearing aid that bypassed the eardrum and connected to the nerves directly, we could hear long lost frequencies again.
I get it, the site is mostly about fun and the internet.
But reminds me also of lost things like "the feeling of being in the backseat of a 1978 Beetle with no air conditioning as a kid on a road trip" and other lost sensations.
My favorite endangered sound is probably too subtle for the museum and, alas, one I can no longer hear anyway: the 15625 Hz squeal of an NTSC cathode ray tube TV. I can remember knowing whether the TV had been turned off or was just on mute (with no video input) well into the 90s just by the sound.
What age did you stop hearing it? I assume if we had a future hearing aid that bypassed the eardrum and connected to the nerves directly, we could hear long lost frequencies again.
The sound lives on in my memory. I can vividly remember the squeee of turning the TV on. Actually I can hear it right now! But I believe that is something called "tinnitus" :)
I appreciate the effort, but there's no way stuff like "Space Invaders" and "Pac Man" sound effects are endangered. It'll be around forever via emulation and IP-value extraction (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Bandai-Namco-Flashback-Blast-Console-... ), at least until "retro" stops being cool. Now, the cacophony of a popular video game arcade...
What year?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6aNPsjNwFo&list=PL5G6BYUMbQ...
The sounds of the analog telephone system: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f63uCpov5Lc
Was going to make the same suggestion. The Evan Doorbell tapes you link to are great for learning about that lost world. I can remember that when I was a kid, once you started dialing, the phone would go silent-- almost . What you would actually hear was hiss, ghostly clicks now and then, and, occasionally, very quietly, down near the noise floor, short bursts of tones - beep boop boop beep boop beep ! I learned abou…