For sounds going extinct. It's an interesting article, and a little disconcerting that there are many sounds with which a certain generation (mine) is familiar that kids today may have never heard, except in the movies. It brings to mind this post from last summer, when I heard a sound that was familiar to me only from WW II movies, though my father heard much more of it than he ever imagined wanting to.

He couldn't have greased the wheels under a steam engine at Grand Central -- steam locomotives were banned from Manhattan before the terminal was built. (The movie Pearl Harbor made a similar error.)

The point about Ft. Bragg and Tanks 25 years ago and the sound changing. We were still using the diesel M60A3 in 1979 and swithced in the 1980'3 to the turbine powered M-1.

I use a ringer box and candlestick phones in my house--and will until they become incompatible with the (eventually) digitized phone system.

I sure am looking forward to the day when my phone can get viruses...

Apropos of your post of a year ago, one of the most amazing airplane sounds is that of a rotary* engine, like a LeRhone or Clerget. The loudest (and coolest) airplane I have ever heard is the Sopwith Camel they fly at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.

* A rotary engine (not to be confused with a Wankel Rotary) is one where the entire engine rotates around a stationary crankshaft. The propeller is bolted directly to the engine casing. Needless to say, muffling such a proposition is nigh on impossible.

It's possible that some sounds will become iconic and learned like other language. The best example of this kind of thing to me is the image of an old victrola record player. Young kids (like mine) know it means "music player" even without ever having seen one, or indeed ever having seen a record player of any sort. Yet because old cartoons used it, so do new cartoons and so the image is maintained even without the original referent.

Again in reference to the post a year ago, the most impressive aircraft sound story:

It was Sep 13, 2001, and I was outside of the church where I had taken my kid for nursery school, in the parking lot. No plane noises, for days. It was odd, how quiet and clear the sky was.

Then, the sound started, from something barely heard, and getting louder. Definitely a jet-engine...

It got louder.

and louder.

AND LOUDER.

At this point, the windows in the cars are vibrating, and I can feel the vibrations in my chest, and the sound is incredibly loud. You can imagine that I'm beginning to get a touch concerned.

Then, from over the trees that surround the church grounds comes a pair of F-15 Eagles, curving into lazy, arcing turns, circling around our general area. They're so low I can read the tail letters, and I can see the loadout quite clearly; Sidewinders and AMRAAMs. Then, the picked a direction and zipped off, leaving the echoes of the sound around them, and me gawking open-mouthed in the parking lot.

It was an incredible sound.