The Cities and Memory sound project includes a growing collection of recordings of various tech gear from years gone by.
Play the sound of a typewriter to a child and they’ll have little idea what it is they’re listening to. Play it to an older adult and they might break into a smile at some of the memories that it instantly evokes. Ditto the sound of an old cassette recorder, rotary telephone, or Super 8 camera.
Keen to preserve these and other sounds for generations to come, Stuart Fowkes has been building the Cities and Memory archive, with old tech sounds forming part of its growing database of recordings.
“We are at a stage now where the lifespan of sounds, as they come into existence and then move out of existence, is so much shorter than it ever has been,” Fowkes told BBC Radio this week. “When you think of the ringtone, that was four or five years ago, that now seems really archaic.
