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    Vintage Photos of Offices – Business Insider

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    • As more employees return to the office, some are being met with limited space — and bedbugs.
    • While open floorplans are now in style, people used to sit in small cubicles.
    • Offices used to have typing pools with dozens of typewriters. In 2025, we all have laptops.

    Thanks to the popularity of shows like “Mad Men” and “Masters of Sex,” people love to see what offices have looked like over the past century … often through dense clouds of cigarette smoke.

    Before email, Teams calls, and Slack, messengers wearing roller skates passed notes between office workers, while laptops were preceded by typewriters, calculators, and stacks of paper.

    And while some office complexes for major firms today — think Nvidia’s futuristic office in Santa Clara or Apple’s Cupertino headquarters — feature vast atriums filled with trees or outdoor amenities like swimming pools and volleyball courts, some 20th-century office workers were lucky if they got a window.

    These vintage photos of offices reveal how far companies have come in regard to technology, interior design, and even safety.

    See what your office might have looked like decades ago.

    One glaring difference between offices now and in 1940? Cigarettes were everywhere.


    old office

    In the 1940s, smoking was commonplace at the office.

    Fox Photos/Getty Images

    When Gallup polled US adults in 1944, 41% said they smoked — compare that to around 11% of US adults who smoked in 2022, per the CDC.

    As such, in the mid-20th century, smoking was common everywhere, from grocery stores to homes to workplaces.

    Technically, there are still some states where it’s legal to smoke inside an office — the only federal bans on smoking are on planes or in federal buildings.

    However, you’d be hard-pressed to find an office building that allows people to light up at their desks.

    Pipes were common sights as well. Today, offices have designated places outside for smoking.


    painter dean 1930

    American scientist Edward Wilber Berry lit up a pipe at work in the 1930s.

    Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    The popularity of the traditional tobacco pipe has been steadily decreasing since the ’90s, though they’re making a comeback with hipsters, The Times of London reported in 2024.

    Before every desk had a computer, there was more space to spread materials out.


    vintage design office

    In 1935, drawing boards, slide rules, set squares, and assorted items were used in a busy design office.

    Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    This image of a design office in 1935 is a far cry from the tech-heavy workplaces of 2025.

    An open-plan office used to look a little different.


    The typing pool at the offices of the retailer Marks and Spencer, Baker Street, London, 7th April 1959.

    The typing pool at the offices of the British retailer Marks & Spencer in 1959.

    Bert Hardy Advertising Archive/Getty Images

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

    Before electronic stock tickers made it possible to see the stock market in real time, employees printed out the news on ticker tape to distribute.


    stock market

    Tickertape from the New York Stock Exchange was passed simultaneously to 2,000 ticker machines in 320 towns in 1937.

    Three Lions/Getty Images

    The last ticker tape machine was released in 1960 — they were first invented by Thomas Edison in the late 1800s.

    Ticker tape has two legacies that live on in 2018. First, the stock prices running along the bottom of your TV screen are still called stock tickers. And second, ticker tape was given a second life when New Yorkers discovered that ticker tape made great confetti.

    Ticker-tape parades still happen, but shredded paper is used instead.

    It was a lot harder to transcribe calls back then.


    speakerphone

    Secretaries simultaneously typed and made phone calls with the aid of the Beoton telephone amplifier in 1960.

    Keystone/Getty Images

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

    Today, there are apps that can record a phone conversation, and headphones mean you don’t need to broadcast the conversation to everyone around you.

    That telephone amplifier is also obsolete — most phones now have built-in speakerphones.

    As technology advanced, every desk became equipped with its own typewriter.


    typewriter factory

    A room full of workers testing typewriters before they leave the factory, circa 1937.

    London Express/Getty Images

    The typewriter was invented in 1867 but didn’t become popular until a couple of 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 that.

    They stayed popular for over 100 years.

    Bookkeepers used a combination of computers, typewriters, and calculators.


    1970s office

    Women at work in the book-keeping room in 1970s Los Angeles.

    Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    If you take a closer look, you might notice that all these bookkeepers are women, a trend that’s still prevalent.

    In 2022, 86.7% of bookkeepers were women, according to Data USA, which cited US Census Bureau data, so maybe not everything has changed.

    When typewriters became obsolete, offices implemented computers and cubicles, which gave people a little privacy.


    Kodak sales reps. work in shared cubicles in close quarters re managing office space; prob. St. Louis

    Remember cubicles?

    Michael L Abramson/Getty Images

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

    At first, cubicles flopped. But when companies realized that using cubicles would increase the number of people that could be crammed into a space, they really took off. The ’80s and ’90s were a booming time for cubicles.

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

    However, there has been a more recent push to bring cubicles back.

    Before email and Slack, some offices communicated via messengers who were given roller skates to speed up the process.


    Skating Messenger

    A famous New York cable company equipped their messengers with roller skates, increasing their delivery speed by 25%.

    Fox Photos/Getty Images

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

    This office had a designated “tea lady” who would walk around providing refreshments.


    office tea lady

    Tea lady Alice Bond provided refreshments for office workers in 1976.

    M. Fresco/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    Some offices still offer amazing perks.

    Now, everything is digital and located in the cloud. But for years, all important records had to have physical copies.


    record keeping machine

    This was a record-keeping machine in use in 1936.

    Henry Griffin/AP Images

    This machine handled 80 individual record cards a minute — now, data can be uploaded to the cloud in seconds.

    Phone booths seem so old-fashioned today.


    transparent photo booths

    Three people made telephone calls from transparent phone booths in 1959.

    Walter Lindlar/AP Images

    These transparent ones still look cool, to be clear.

    So do typewriters.


    old newspaper office

    British film scholar and Daily Express film critic Ian Christie in his office in 1968.

    Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    Maybe they’ll come back, though. As Business Insider’s Hannah Towey pointed out in 2021, physical media objects like records, typewriters, and film cameras were all in high demand.

    Note the ashtray, rotary phone, and old-fashioned radio — it’s a far cry from what your typical desk looks like now.


    old office

    This is the most ’70s desk set-up imaginable.

    Barnes/Daily Express/Getty Images

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

    It makes you wonder: How different will they be 10, 15, or 30 years from now?

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