It’s enough to put you in a personal time warp.

Years ago, these sounds were part of the soundtrack of our daily lives. Now, they are rarely, if ever, heard. As a result, our children may never hear them or realize the extremely recent technical progress they represent.

1: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) Sounds

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Who could forget the experience of logging onto AOL and hearing the welcoming reassurance that people really do like us with the simple announcement of “You’ve got mail?” This was back when the Internet was new and we paid by the minute for our time online. We got new discs from AOL just so we could get free minutes on the Internet. Many of us got our first email address from AOL, and some keep their AOL addresses to this day to show their early adaptor bona fides. And before there were texts or Gchat or other messaging options, there was AIM, AOL Instant Messenger. These were primitive products, looking back, but they built an online community of friends from around the world.

2: ICQ Sound

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Online messaging applications ICQ and AIM became standard fare during our digital youth. ICQ began in 1996 as the digital version of ham radio. The “CQ” stood for the ham radio term “seek you.” Hence: “I seek you.” At ICQ’s height, it had more than 100 million accounts. Today it has only 11 million monthly users. But the startup ICQ sound remains an iconic symbol for many former ICQ users remembering their early days on the Web in the 1990s.

3: It’s Not My Fault!

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This sound seems like Mac was just scapegoating its problems onto the Apple user, but it was a useful way to alert you that something — perhaps a dwindling power supply — needed your attention. 

4: Calling a Phone Number to Find Out the Time

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In 2007, the era of calling a phone number to find out the time of day came to an end. Yes, in the old days, we could call a number and hear a woman’s recorded voice state that, “at the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be . . .”  Today, with cellphones, computer clocks and cable box clocks everywhere, we always have access to digitally precise time.

5: Movie Countdown

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In modern movie theaters, the stream of movie trailers flow one into another. After several minutes, the actual movie seamlessly begins after several movie theater warnings to turn off cellphones and buy some popcorn. There was a time when the movie countdown was an important notice to moviegoers that the film was starting.

6: Teletype

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This teleprinter was an early form of email. It was used to send and receive typed messages over various types of communications channels. This device, which sounded like an industrial typewriter being operated by the world’s strongest, most durable typist, was used for telegrams at Western Union, newswires for the media and for police departments communicating with precincts.

7: Space Invaders Sound

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Before there were video games at home, our youth was spent in shopping malls playing arcade games such as Space Invaders. It was an addictive and popular game that inspired thousands of other games.

8: Ma Bell Phone Ring

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Our kids may know this sound if they set an alarm on their iPhone to the sound of “Old Phone.” For people who remember the growth of the national telephone system or even having a landline in their home, this distinctive and universal sound was not just a “ringtone” but was the actual sound of a ringing phone.

9: Old Cash Register

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There was a time before computerized cash registers when kids used to know how to count money and figure out the exact change on the spot. The oldest of these registers had a hand crank, which sometimes created a written record, and made a ‘ding’ sound. Today, calculating the change is both a lost and unnecessary art. Most people aren’t paying with cash anyway.  

10: Vinyl Records

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Before hipsters embraced collecting vinyl records, they had all but disappeared despite absolutely dominating the recorded music front for decades. Many music connoisseurs believe the warm, mahogany-rich sound of vinyl is superior to the compressed digital sound of CDs and MP3s.

11: Pac-Man

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Pac-Man began as an arcade game in the 1980s and went on to become an animated TV show and even had its own song. It is probably the most recognized game of the era, and it pioneered the maze chase genre in gaming.

12: CD Skipping Sound

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You’ve played your favorite CD endlessly until the day it actually gets a scratch and you get THIS sound. The sound not only is so obnoxious you have to leap from your chair to make it stop, it means you have to buy a new CD.

13: Pay Phone

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Poor Superman would not be able to find a phone booth to change clothes in today’s world. It may be hard to imagine a world without cellphones, but for decades, we relied on pay phones to keep in touch when we were on the go. They also turned up frequently in showdowns between the bad guys and good guys in the movies.  

14: VCR Tape Rewinding

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We ask: How many times did Blockbuster lecture us on the virtues of rewinding the tape before returning them? Our children ask: What is Blockbuster? DVDs and On Demand programming have completely changed the way we watch movies. Now, we ask: Where do we go to get all the time back we spent rewinding movies?

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15: Tetris on Gameboy

The left- and right-arrow key game was the first for Gameboy, which was the first of the portable video game players. It was so popular even girls got into it.