Freesound Forums

I'm hoping to preserve some mechanical sounds that were common 20-30 years ago but have now dwindled into obscurity. If you have access to any of this gear, I encourage you to capture it and donate it to the project before these sounds are lost forever. This is my starter list, but I keep thinking of more.

Mimeograph machine - ker chunk, ker chunk, ker chunk

keypunch machine - thump thump thump (as the keys are pressed) then chick-chick sllllur clock (as the card slides over and is placed into the stack

keypunch card reader - purrrrrr (the fan starting to separate the cards) then chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk (as each card is read) then all sound trailing off as the last card is processed and the fan turns off

a line printer - the bang of the head against the wide paper, a little overstrike which goes whine would be nice too

electric typewrite - an IBM Selectric "golf ball" type that hits the paper with that staccato sound; a few lines would be good to hear that line advance as the golf ball travels across the paper width

Just your luck, I own a teletype. I'll see what I can record for you.

My grandparents have an electric IBM "golf ball" typewriter. If I go over to their house sometime I'll try to bring a microphone.

this is actually a great idea. anyone else got some old gear?

i used to have a proffesional HP 9000 server with 40+ raid disks. It made a hell of a ruckus. Give it away in the end to the "hp9000" linux project. Should have recorded it before giving it away, what a pitty!!

- bram

My teletype has a card punch, but I've never used it.

I just remembered that I have recordings of my teletype from an old film I did. I'll upload those ASAP, and maybe I'll make some new recordings at a later date.

I can try recording the roar of my vintage PDP-8/m.. that thing makes quite a sound too!

Okay, the sound has been submitted and is waiting for approval.

In the meantime, you can look at the picture in the freesound group on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21311308@N00/160777758/

approved

Cool, thanks for the quick response Anton!

Here's the sample: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=19488

@listen4sounds: There's a lot of background noise due to the roar of the teletype itself. I don't think it would be too hard to remove if you wanted to isolate the key strikes.

If I record this again later I can try individual key strikes, carraige returns, and line feeds. And the little bell.
Hopefully this sample will be sufficient for the time being, though.

Halleck: thanks for the quick reply. That sound is awesome! Takes me back to the days of standing in air conditioned raised floor machine rooms.

I just hope we all take the opportunity to grab those "easy sounds" we have available to us before they slip away....

hmmm... reminds me that my sister has an old mechanical pinball machine from the 60's. The sound of all the relays inside the machine as a game is played is amazing... I'll definitely add this to my "to do list" when I visit her in a few weeks.