Sounds Kids Today Have Probably Never Heard

Depending on your age, you or your kids or grandkids may have heard these sounds. But children born after a certain time period have likely never heard them. (Looking at you, Millenials and Gen Z!) Take a walk back in time and see if any of these sounds strike a nostalgic chord in you. And make a game of it by clicking the link to the sounds and seeing if you’re kids can identify them.

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. Listen to the sound of a rotary phone dialing a number here.

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. Listen to the sound of a typewriter here.

Coffee Percolator

Coffee percolators once enjoyed great popularity but were supplanted in the early 1970s by automatic drip coffee makers. The bubble, hiss was matched with an aroma that really woke folks up. Listen to a coffee percolator here.

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 the changing channels here.

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.

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. Listen to this sound here.

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. Listen to the tone here.

Cash Register

Those push buttons were clumsy, but veteran cashiers could check you out just as fast with these old-style machines as their modern counterparts do with today’s scanners. Listen to an old-school cash register here.

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!” Listen to the sound of a film projector here.

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. Listen to a record scratch here.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©spyder24/ via Getty Images.