Updated 2025-04-09T19:41:32Z
- As more employees return to the office, some are finding there's limited space to work.
- People used to sit in small cubicles — now, open floorplans are in style.
- There used to be 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 offices have looked like over the past century … often through dense clouds of cigarette smoke.
Before email 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 of the most glaring differences between offices now and in 1940 is all the smoking — cigarettes were everywhere.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 is a push to bring cubicles back.
Before email and Slack, some offices communicated via messengers who were given roller skates to speed up the process.
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.
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.
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.
These transparent ones still look cool, to be clear.
So do typewriters.
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.
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?
