Who
knew some noises could eventually become as extinct as the
passenger pigeon? Depending on your age, you or your children or
grandchildren may have only heard some of the following sounds in old
movies, if at all.
1. Rotary Dial Telephone
The formerly familiar
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.
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