I saw a story headline last week that inspired this episode. It told me that Elwood Edwards had died at 74. Don't know who he is? He received $200 to record all the original AOL sounds and inspired at least one really great movie.

That got me thinking about other sounds from the more-or-less recent past, so I dove into my sound archives and found a bunch of them. And what I didn’t have, Wikipedia did, so hats off to them for being such an important archive in so many different ways. By the way, if you use Wikipedia, even once a month, please send them the five bucks they ask for each year. We’re talking about the cost of a cup of coffee here, folks—they deserve it.

So—sounds. I’ve collected a bunch of them here for your nostalgic listening pleasure. I’ll tell you what they are at the end of the program, but for now, just have a listen. These are not in chronological order, by design; they’re just sounds of the technological past.