The Sounds of 90s Internet Connection

Alright everyone, imagine this: it’s the 1990s, and you’re trying to connect to the

internet. You click “connect,” and suddenly your computer starts making those famous

*beeps, screeches, and hisses.* Ever wondered what that noise actually was?

Those sounds weren’t random, they were the sound of your modem doing its job.

The word modem actually stands for MOdulator and DEModulator. It had one main job: to help your

computer talk over the telephone network, which was designed for voices, not data.

Here’s the problem: your computer speaks in 0s and 1, but a phone line can only carry smooth,

continuous sounds. That’s what we call analog signals. So, your modem had to