10 Pieces of Technology Everyone Used to Have That Are Becoming Obsolete

Our favorite technology and beloved gadgets from yesteryear do not age well. It’s difficult to believe that at one time the following now-obsolete technology used to be everywhere.

Do remember walking around listening to music on your Walkman? How about using your rotary phone to call the local Blockbuster to see if they had a VHS copy of Blade Runner available to rent? Like Rutger Hauer’s dying Replicant says in that 1982 sci-fi classic, “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

The following pieces of technology have either become obsolete or are well on their way, usually because a shinier, newer type of tech does the same job better. Which of these pieces of Jurassic technology do you still own and operate?

VCR

The VCR, or videocassette recorder, changed the way people watched movies and TV shows in the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of waiting for something to air on TV, you could rent a movie at a video store or program your VCR to record a TV program that you could play back at any time.

The arrival of DVD players, DVRs, and streaming services sounded the death knell for the beloved VCR. Not only did discs and digital services provide higher-quality content, they didn’t need rewinding like clunky VHS tapes. In 2016, Funai Electric produced the last new VCR.

Fax Machine

The fax, short for facsimile, machine allows users to insert a printed document into it and telephonically transmit the information to another fax machine, where it is printed.

Although the ubiquitous fax machine had a dedicated spot in every 1990s and 2000s office, today we can email documents as well as scan signed to documents to attach to emails. There is little need for a separate machine that needs ink and paper to spit out hard copies of transmitted documents. Yet, you will still find some old-school businesses retain an ancient fax machine… just in case.

Walkman/Discman

Sony introduced the Walkman in 1979 as a way to play music on audiocassettes while on the go. The first Sony Discman arrived in 1984 and could play music CDs on the go, although the songs tended to skip a lot if you bounced the Discman around while jogging.

Even though people used Walkmans and Discmans well into the 2000s, the introduction of iPods and digital media players made the former popular devices obsolete almost overnight. These digital versions of Discmans hold more songs than a single audiocassette or CD ever could.

iPod

Apple introduced the portable digital media player known as the iPod in 2001. The little gadgets revolutionized the way people listened to music on the go by allowing folks to load up their iPods with MP3 files instead of using audiocassettes and CDs.

In 2022, Apple discontinued the iPod after selling an estimated 450 million devices. Today, people stream music on their cell phones, so there is no need to lug around a separate device that only has one function.

Typewriter

The first commercial typewriters didn’t catch on in the United States until the 1880s, but boy did this technology for printing typed characters enjoy a longer run than most gadgets.

100 years later, in the 1980s, computers with word processing programs began to replace typewriters in offices and at home. The computer keyboard retained a similar character layout to the QWERTY layout of typewriters, but now people could make corrections on-screen before printing on paper.

Although typewriters are still used in certain countries such as India, most Americans born after 1990 have never seen or used one in an office.

Polaroid Camera

Polaroid cameras were instant cameras that produced self-developing pictures moments after taking them. Instead of waiting days for a full roll of traditional film to get developed, Polaroid cameras offered instant gratification.

In our digital world today where we document every meal by taking pics on our cell phones and posting the pictures on social media, there is little need for a bulky camera that prints hard copies on expensive, self-developing film.

Hipsters can still buy Polaroid cameras at nostalgia-peddling retailers such as Urban Outfitters. However, most people take all the selfies and digital snapshots they want on their cell phone with no need to print the pics on the spot.

Pager

A pager, also known as a beeper, is a wireless telecommunications device you have seen featured in movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The little gadgets — usually used by doctors and Wall Street types — flashed the phone number on-screen of someone trying to contact you so you could race to the nearest phone and call them.

It’s difficult to believe that pagers were once considered status symbols and implied that the owner of one was “important.” With cell phones and text messaging, pagers are mostly obsolete except for some emergency services who find pager systems more reliable than cellular networks.

Rotary Phone

A rotary phone had a dial that you turned by inserting your finger into a numbered hole. The phrase “dial a telephone number” comes from the use of rotary phones.

Beginning as early as the 1960s, push-button dialing began to replace rotary dialing and allowed one to dial a number much faster. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a working rotary phone in someone’s home. Landlines of any variety are also disappearing as people continue to use cell phones as their primary means of communication.

Floppy Disk

A floppy disk is a thin, flexible, magnetic storage medium used to transfer small files between computers. Floppy disks came in different sizes since their invention in the early 1970s, but even the more recent floppy disks couldn’t hold more than a few megabytes of data.

As file sizes grew bigger and people began to transfer data using USB flash drives, optical discs, and cloud services, the appeal of transferring a few bits of data on a floppy disk waned fast. Today, no new computer on the market comes with a floppy disk drive.

LaserDisc

The LaserDisc debuted in 1978 and offered an alternative to VCRs. Instead of playing movies on tapes that needed to be rewound and had low resolution, LaserDiscs stored movies digitally on pizza-sized discs that one could play on a LaserDisc player.

Unfortunately, the LaserDisc was ahead of its time and never became more than a niche market. Although the sound and picture quality of LaserDiscs blew VHS tapes out of the water, a VCR could play movies and record TV programs. As such, few people in the 1980s wanted an additional device connected to their TV.

Years later, the smaller and higher-capacity DVD caught on with consumers and made the platter-size LaserDisc obsolete except to nostalgic collectors.