Technology comes and goes at a rapid pace. In the early 80s, Walkmans were the height of cool… but if you were born in the late 20th century you probably never saw one, let alone heard the unmistakable sound of a cassette tape spinning or being rewound…
It is with this in mind that two Germans, Jan Derksen and Daniel Chun, embarked on the project of creating an online museum of the sounds of endangered objects.
As smartphones without keyboards were becoming the norm, Jan Derksen, who still had a cell phone with a physical keyboard, had an epiphany… The “clack clack” of the phone keys he is used to hearing when he writes his text messages will eventually disappear one day… And we will lose our memory of it.
He then had the idea of creating " Keep The Sound"
“Conserve the Sound” is an online museum for endangered and threatened sounds. The sound of a rotary phone, a Walkman, an analog typewriter, a pay phone, a 56k modem, a nuclear power plant or even a cell phone keypad are partially disappeared or are about to disappear from our daily lives.
About a hundred sounds are already available online and cover the 20th century as well as the early 2000s. Among these, you will be pleased to find the very particular sound of the rotary telephone, the clicking of typewriters, the sound of a Polaroid or the crank of a car window... in short, old-fashioned sounds, but so full of meaning when you knew them in your youth!
Each soundtrack is accompanied by a few photos of the object in question.
Some sounds are missing, such as the Tamagochi beep, the Nokia 3310 ringtone or even video game sounds, but these are covered by copyright and therefore cannot be used freely... too bad!
On the other hand, the base continues to grow and you even have the possibility of sending your own sounds so that they can complete the collection!
Article updated on January 24, 2021 by Byothe
