It starts out claiming that 1980s offices were more noisy than today, but I don't know that that is true. We don't even have cubicles anymore. You're lucky if your team and seven others aren't sharing the same conference table "open office" space.
Those old hammer printers were loud. Commercial printers were often housed in cases with sound-deadening materials, even though they usually occupied a room dedicated to computers (with the offices having terminals). Workers in smaller offices and personal computer users often had to put up with the relatively loud high-pitched drone of dot-matrix printers, though some would get enclosures to deaden the sound.
Even if open offices somehow manage to be louder, it is an entirely different quality of noise.
I interned at a stodgy 80s-style company in the 90s (I'm sure the office was exactly the same as the decade before). It was nice actually, compared to my "modern" office. The printers and copiers were in different places so they generally weren't bothersome if you were at your desk. The main noise annoyances were 1) telephones ringing sometimes--those old phones were loud, and 2) neighboring workers talking. They didn't have separate cubicles, but rather cubicle walls were used to separate workgroups from each other. I guess 3) computer keyboards were noisy back then, but at this place most workers didn't have computers at their desks yet.
Peak quietness for offices was, in my experience, in the late 90s or early 2000s. Everyone had separate cubicles with sound-absorbing walls. I really miss those days.
Of course, everyone's experiences will be different. Different companies had different office layouts, though there definitely have been clear trends.
Offices at the office. With walls, and doors that shut, and sometimes even windows that opened.
They were relatively easy to find up until the late 90s when I stopped "going in"; maybe if people want to fill their expensive commercial real estate you all can convince the suits to bring them back?
