Ringing telephones, cash register bells, and typewriter keys — all sounds once ubiquitous, now disappearing rapidly. In today’s column, P-I business writer Bill Virgin discusses the sounds that are gradually being eliminated by modern technology.
“Radio newscasts used to use as a background sound effect a clattering wire machine. But news wires have been fed to newsrooms by computers for more than two decades (no clanging bells to alert editors to a bulletin). People might still hear that sound and associate it with a newscast without really knowing why — but for how much longer?”