21 Things Anybody Under 16 Won't Believe About How We Used The Internet

Dial Up

That sound. THAT SOUND. It is safe to say that everybody sat through this racket at one point or another. The dreadful noise the computer made when it was connecting to the internet and tying up the phone line sounded like the perfect torturous mixture of pings, bings, and fingernails on a chalkboard. Sometimes, it took only a few seconds, others just minutes, and on occasion, it would take literally FOREVER. Or even better, it just chose not to work at all (usually when something important needed to be done online). Imagine surfing through radio stations in the middle of nowhere and only hearing static. That is more or less what old computers did when searching for an internet connection, which was impossible to do if somebody in the house was on the phone.