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Ask Slashdot: Sounds We Don't Hear Any More?
J. L. Tympanum writes: While discussing music with my 24-year old son, the Typewriter Song (Leroy Anderson) came up. Within 10 seconds he had it playing on his laptop, but he didn't really get the joke because he had never seen a typewriter, nor heard the characteristics sounds — the clack of the keys, the end-of-line bell, the zip of the carriage return — that the typewriter makes. What other sounds do we not hear any more? More points for the longer they lasted (typewriters were around for over a century).
The sound of a teletype machine. I had a model 15 in my bedroom when I was in High School back in the 60s. It was connected to my shortwave ham radio rig. I used it to converse with other hams around the world. I could also tune in on Reuters news and weather bureau reports. Later, I worked as an Engineer at a radio station. A model 15 was how we got our news from the AP wire.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Cash registers haven't made the Cha Ching sound in a long time. Yet people still say, "Cha Ching!" when they encounter a monetary windfall. I wonder how many of them don't even realize its onomatopoeic origin.
That funny sound the videocassette makes when you push it in the VCR, and the tape winds around the drum, and finally it starts playing.
- Mike
My dad used to go to church Saturday to mimeograph the Sunday bulletin. I still remember the smell and sound of that thing.
"As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again began the infernal patient snap-ah-ahâ"a round, flat sound, a shivering cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till the rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was he released from the panting tension."--Sinclair Lewis, "Babbitt"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The very characteristic rattle of a motion picture projector--most familiar from 16 mm projectors in classrooms or 8 mm projectors showing home movies, but also faintly audible in many movie theatres. Probably around 1900 to 1980 or so.
The whine of a reel-to-reel tape recorder rewinding, rising in pitch as the diameter of the remaining tape decrees, followed by the dramatic snapping noise as the end of the tape comes off the reel. 1945 to 1990 maybe.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Good riddance to CRTs. I always hated that sound. Every so often when I go to an office that has an old TV running, ugh. That sound always drove me nuts.
When composite-input TVs came out my dad would leave the TV on with the cable box and VCR off and I'd ask him why the TV is still on. He'd say "it's not on." It most definitely was and that annoying whine was driving me batty.
I used to take apart my TVs to put baffling in to cancel out that sound. I am 43 now and I can still hear past 17.5KHz. Why? Because it was drilled into me by my mom to not blast my ears with headphones, and when using power tools I use hearing protection. I have an even greater appreciation for my hearing now because once I got a sinus infection so bad it spread to both ears and I had 95%+ hearing loss for more than three months when my inner and middle ears filled with fluid, and there was so much pressure it perforated my eardrums, so I'm even more strict about hearing protection having experienced near-total deafness for an extended period. Since then certain frequencies cause some pain due to reverberation because those frequencies seem to be amplified to me - it may be due to scar tissue where my ear drums perforated or something, I don't know and haven't bothered to find out.
But flyback transformer whine? Ugh. Same with PC power supplies that are going bad - they have a very similar high pitch whine. When I go to my old office to maintain the servers for my partners, I need to stay out of the lobby because the power supply whines like mad. No one else in the office can hear it.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
File under genre "ambient horror": Dial-up modem slowed down
I could listen to this all day. And probably will.
I'm using a CRT monitor right now, a 21" IBM P275 with a Trinitron tube. Right now I'm enjoying near perfect color reproduction, blacks that are actually black, zero input lag, no ghosting, nothing that resembles backlight bleed and no stuck/dead pixels. Haven't noticed flyback whine for years but that's probably down to my age. LCD is still inferior to CRT in many ways and you have to wonder what CRTs we would have today if development had continued. LCD has also taken a step backwards recently with the introduction of LED backlights, they make for thinner panels and lower power consumption but uniformity of many recent panels is really poor.
Having said that, my CRT will probably have to go this year, most probably late in the spring when the heat the thing generates is no longer welcome. My desk is also sagging from the weight of it sitting there for nine years.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Nerrrrr! Squawk! BONG! BONG! BONG! Scrrrrch! Doot!
I ran a BBS and loved those sounds the negotiation, hand shake, and the connect; meant someone was logging in, One's entire purpose of running a BBS.
After 8 lines I did have to silence them.
At work we once had a bank of modems, and to check which modem went to which phone number (people sometimes switched them without telling us) we would have to call the number on a voice phone across the way and then run over to the modem bank to see which lights were on. Often the modem lights wouldn't stay on long enough from a mere phone call.
Rather than run fast and risky in a crowded, wiry data center, I discovered that if I whistled certain frequencies mirroring the connect sound, the modem would think I was another modem and spend a longer time trying to connect. Thus, by learning to speak modemese, I could walk instead of run.
A computer room steward saw me doing this and told his shift buddies about "the crazy lonely guy who flirts with modems". Referring to their squawky sound, somebody joked about modems being consolation partners after I allegedly got dumped by a Dalek. Good Times!
Table-ized A.I.