Vintage photos of offices – Business Insider

Updated

2025-04-09T19: 41: 32Z

While more and more employees return to the office, some people find that there is a limited space to work.
People were sitting in small cabins – now open floor plans are fashionable.
There was a typing pool 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 the offices look like during the last century … Often through dense clouds of cigarette smoke.

Before email and soft mail, messengers carrying roller skates spent notes between office employees, while laptops were preceded by typewriters, calculators and paper stacks.

And although some office complexes for large companies today – think of the futuristic office of Nvidia in Santa Clara or at the Cupertino de Apple headquarters – have large atriums filled with trees or outdoor equipment such as swimming pools and volleyball courts, some 20th century office employees were lucky if they had a window.

These vintage photos of the offices reveal to what extent companies have traveled technology, interior decoration and even security.

See what your office could look like decades ago.

One of the most blatant differences between offices now and in 1940 is that all smoking – cigarettes were everywhere.

In the 1940s, smoking was common to the office.

Fox Photos / Getty Images

Technically, there are still states where it is legal to smoke in an office – the only federal prohibitions for smoking are on planes or in federal buildings.

However, you would find it difficult to find an office building that allows people to light up in their office.

The pipes were also common sites. Today, the offices have appointed outdoor places to smoke.

Dean painter 1930 — American scientist Edward Wilber Berry illuminated a pipe at work in the 1930s.

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

The popularity of the traditional tobacco hose has not stopped decreasing since the 90s, although they have returned with hipsters, reported the Times of London in 2024.

Before each desktop had a computer, there was more space to spread the materials.

Vintage design desk — In 1935, drawing plates, slide rules, adjustment squares and matching items were used in a highly frequented design office.

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

This image of a design office in 1935 is far from the workplaces responsible for technology of 2025.

An open plan office looked a little different.

The typing swimming pool in the offices of the Marks and Spencer retailer, Baker Street, London, April 7, 1959. — The striking pool at the offices of the British retailer Marks & Spencer in 1959.

Bert Hardy Advertising Archive / Getty Images

Now, an open floor office generally has giant tables with several stations, not individual offices.

Before electronic stock ticks allow you to see the stock market in real time, employees printed the news on the Ticker band to distribute.

The latest Ticker band was published in 1960 – they were invented for the first time by Thomas Edison in the late 1800s.

Ticker Tape has two inheritances that live in 2018. First, the equity courses that take place at the bottom of your television screen are always called stock tickers. And secondly, Ticker Tape received a second life when the New Yorkers discovered that Ticker Tape had made great confetti.

Ticker’s parades are still occurring, but shredded paper is used instead.

It was much more difficult to transcribe calls at the time.

speaker — The secretaries simultaneously typed and made telephone calls using the Beoton telephone amplifier in 1960.

Keystone / Getty images

This secretary seems to write a conversation that she has with someone on the phone, that she listens to use a proto-spakerphone device.

Today, there are applications that can record a telephone conversation, and the earphones mean that you do not need to broadcast the conversation to everyone around you.

This telephone amplifier is also obsolete – most phones now have integrated speakers.

As technology progressed, each office became equipped with its own typewriter.

The typewriter was invented in 1867 but only became popular a few decades later during the industrial revolution. He became the work of people to record facts and figures, and the typewriter was the easiest way to do so.

They remained popular for more than 100 years.

The accountants used a combination of computers, typewriters and calculators.

Bureau of the 1970s — Women at work in the accounting room in the 1970s in Los Angeles.

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

If you look more closely, you may notice that all these accounters are women, a trend that is always widespread.

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

When writing machines have become obsolete, offices have implemented computers and cabins, which gave people a little intimacy.

Representatives of Kodak sales. Work in shared cabins in neighborhoods close to the management of the office space; Prob. Saint-Louis — Do you remember the cabins?

Michael L Abramson / Getty Images

The cubes entered for the first time in 1968, when they were invented by Robert Propst, who wanted to improve the typical office enclosure office. He thought that the cabins would increase productivity and give workers privacy.

At first, the cabins collapsed. But when companies have realized that the use of cabins increases the number of people who could be piled up in a space, they have really taken off. The 80s and 90s were in full swing for the cabins.

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

However, there is a push to bring back cabins.

Before email and soft mail, some offices communicated via messengers who received roller skates to speed up the process.

Messenger of skating — A famous New York Cablodistribution Company has equipped its messengers with roller skates, increasing their delivery speed by 25%.

Fox Photos / Getty Images

Probably due to the violation of dozens of labor safety protocols and the advent of computers, roller skating is one thing in the past.

This office had a designated “lady” who was walking to provide refreshments.

office lady — Tea Lady Alice Bond provided refreshments to office employees in 1976.

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

Some offices still offer incredible advantages.

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

File holding machine — It was a record holder machine used in 1936.

Henry Griffin / AP images

This machine has managed 80 individual recording cards per minute – now the data can be downloaded from the cloud in a few seconds.

Telephone boxes seem so old -fashioned today.

Transparent photo boots — Three people made phone calls from transparent telephone booths in 1959.

Walter Lindlar / AP images

These transparencies are always cool, to be clear.

Writing machines too.

Old Newspaper Bureau — British Film Scholar and Daily Express Critic Ian Christie in his office in 1968.

Daily Express / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Maybe they will come back, however. As Hannah Towey of Business Insider pointed out in 2021, physical media objects such as recordings, typewriter and cinema cameras were all very demanded.

Notice the ashtray, the rotary phone and the old -fashioned radio – that is far from what your typical office looks like now.

old office — This is the most of the 70s imaginable office configuration.

Barnes / Daily Express / Getty Images

It is impossible to overestimate how different our workspaces were just 30 years ago.

This makes you ask you: how different they will be in 10, 15 or 30 years?

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