Vintage office photos – Business Insider

When Gallup surveyed among American adults in 1944, 41% reported smoking — compared to about 11% of American adults who smoked in 2022, according to the CDC.

So by the mid-20th century, smoking was common everywhere, from grocery stores to homes to workplaces.

Technically, there is there are still some states where it is legal smoking inside an office – the only federal smoking bans are on airplanes or federal buildings.

However, it would be difficult to find an office building that would allow people to light up at their desks.

The popularity of the traditional tobacco pipe has continued to decline since the 1990s, although it is making a comeback among hipsters, The Times of London reported in 2024.

This image of a design office from 1935 is a far cry from the technology-intensive workplaces of 2025.

Now, an open-plan office typically has giant tables with multiple stations, not individual desks.

THE last ticker was released in 1960 – they were first invented by Thomas Edison in the late 1800s.

The ticker has two legacies that continue in 2018. First, the stock prices that appear at the bottom of your TV screen are still called stock symbols. And second, the ticker got a second life when New Yorkers discovered that the ticker produced excellent confetti.

Ticker parades still take place, but shredded paper is used instead.

This secretary appears to be writing down a conversation she is having with someone on the phone, which she is listening to using a proto-speaker.

Today, there are apps that allow you to record a phone conversation, and headphones save you the need to broadcast the conversation to everyone around you.

This phone amplifier is also obsolete: most phones now come with built-in speakers.

The typewriter was invented in 1867 but did not become popular until a few decades later, during the Industrial Revolution. It became people’s job to record facts and figures, and the typewriter was the easiest way to do this.

They have remained popular for over 100 years.

If you look closely, you may notice that all of these accountants are women, a trend that still prevails.

In 2022, 86.7% of accountants were women, according to United States datawhich cited US Census Bureau data, so maybe not everything has changed.

Cubicles first entered our lives in 1968, when they were invented by Robert Propst, who wanted to improve the typical open office. He believed the cabins would increase productivity and give workers privacy.

At first, the cabins collapsed. But when companies realized that using cubicles would increase the number of people who could cram into a space, they really took off. The 80s and 90s were a boom time for cabins.

Today, many offices have abandoned them in favor of the original open offices – just take a look at the offices of Shopify, DropBox, or even Business Insider.

However, more recent efforts have been made to bring back the cabins.

Probably due to the violation of dozens of workplace safety protocols and the advent of computers, office roller skating is a thing of the past.

Some offices still offer incredible perks.

This machine processed 80 individual files per minute. Now data can be uploaded to the cloud in seconds.

These transparencies still look cool, to be clear.

But maybe they will come back. As Business Insider’s Hannah Towey pointed out in 2021, physical media items like disks, typewriters, and cameras were all in high demand.

It’s impossible to overstate how different our workspaces were just 30 years ago.

We wonder: how different will they be in 10, 15 or 30 years?