Interesting article about a collection of sound effects, especially for obsolete sounds. Remember what it sounded like when someone slammed down a telephone? When was the last time you heard that?

Sounds are like smells, he says. They can transport the listener to another time and place. The buzz of an airplane propeller sends Sheehy's mind back to hot afternoons in 1950s Bakersfield, playing in the yard while aircraft sputtered overhead. "The sound immediately triggers memories of time and temperature," he said.

A handful of obsolete noises are so ingrained in our consciousness that filmmakers and advertisers still use them to evoke audience reactions. In the 2002 movie "Undercover Brother," for instance, a phonograph needle scraping across a vinyl record signaled an abrupt halt to the action.

The emotional power of vintage sounds might explain the popularity of cellphone ring tones that mimic rotary telephone bells. "It's one of the biggest ring tones we sell," said Tom Valentino, president of Valentino Production Music, the nation's oldest sound-effects warehouse. In a similar vein, slot machines that pay out vouchers instead of cash often play a recording of cascading coins because research found customers missed the jackpot noise.

I remember laughing while watching some old movies made in the 1920s and even into the 1930s. The movies were about airplanes and they got the sound effects completely wrong. Back in WWI, many planes used rotary engines where the crankshaft was bolted to the firewall and the cylinders rotated with the prop. These engines basically had 2 speeds: on and off. To reduce power for landing, the pilot used a kill switch to briefly turn off the engine. He couldn't kill the engine for long or the spark plugs might foul, preventing the engine from restarting. You'd see the plane coming in and it's be making a kind of burping sound. Sure enough, those movies would show a much more modern plane coming in for a landing, burping all the way.