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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
chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff!
I always knew that one day I'd no longer be able to know a CRT was in the room from the high-pitched flyback transformer sound, but I always expected it would be because of my own loss of high-frequency hearing. But the CRT pretty much disappeared before that. Length of time: less than the telephone.
we didn't record them when we had the chance.
Nerrrrr! Squawk! BONG! BONG! BONG! Scrrrrch! Doot!
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
With almost every TV station broadcasting 24x7, you don't hear these sounds much anymore.
Duration: presumably from the 1940s or 1950s throught at least the 1980s.
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.
I haven't heard floppy drives for a while. Also, dot matrix printers. And the sound of rotary telephones as you're dialing them. Actually, Mental Floss had an article about this.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
"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!
The Museum of Endangered Sounds has a lot of great examples of this.
, which not everyone can hear, but the "Bonnnnnng" sound of the degaussing coil and the crackling sound of the high voltage hitting the CRT at startup...
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Guess you don't live in a cold part of the world in the winter, or where it can hit 35C+ in the summer. Around here in Canada, we use 30-50m segments that aren't welded because the tracks shrink and expand so much. Once the temps drop to -20C here, you can lose over an 3cm, and once it gets over 35C with the train's on them they can expand over 10cm causing them to warp off the bed.
So if I walk outside, the next time a train goes by I can hear it hit every clack clearly. Since it's around -20C right now, I can hear it inside my house about 300m away if I pay attention.
Om, nomnomnom...
Come join the light side of the force with our sexy 50Hz.
What the hell is this? This is not news. Just put this crap in the polls, where questions belong.
While you are technically correct, I happen to think it's one of the more enjoyable threads
on Slashdot in a long time.
There's a lot of unpleasant news which shows up here. One can only take so much
of that sort of reality in a day's time, before despair sets in. So an enjoyable lighthearted
thread is far from the worst that could be on this website, though I certainly agree that
Slashdot these days is a far cry from what it used to be.
Most lines are welded now, so it doesn't happen any more.
Not the same way, or as often, but you still get the clack as you go over a rail joint; they're just expansion joints and less common. I recall a problem that I ran across in high school, that posited a one-mile continuous length of railroad track, and asked 'if the track expands by one inch, and buckles rigidly, so that it bends only at the middle, and is otherwise straight, how far off the ground is the rail at its midpoint?' The answer is, surprisingly, almost 15 feet (do the math: Pythagorean theorem, hypotenuse 1/2 mile + 1/2 inch, one side 1/2 mile, solve for third side). And you'll still get the rail clacking going over points and frogs in areas where you have switches.