As technology continues to advance, devices, gadgets, and software that were once innovative have slowly disappeared. We have said goodbye to things that were a huge part of our lives and we thought would never go out of fashion.
When technologies are no longer in use due to the creation of newer and more sophisticated alternatives, we call them obsolete. From typewriters to landlines to VHS, these tech products have fizzled out within the last decade.
Typewriters
The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874 but did not become common in offices until after the mid-1880s. The machine was an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It was widely used by professional writers, in offices, business correspondence in private homes, and by students. Like every other old technology, Typewriters have been replaced by faster computers. In 2011, the world’s last remaining manual typewriter manufacturer closed for good in Mumbai, India.
VHS (Video Home System)
Video Home System or VHS used to be just as big as DVDs are today. They were the preferred media for home videos from the 1970s to the early 2000s. and could be used for recording videos. The rise of the DVD in 2008 saw the popular VHS become obsolete. DVD replaced VHS as the new video technology both for recording and film distribution.
Film cameras
The world’s first photograph was captured by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827 using a technique known as heliography. Since then, the photography world has evolved. The film cameras were invented years later and they had reels of film that people had to take to local shops to process into paper pictures.
The rise of digital cameras has made film cameras obsolete. Now anyone can take photographs with their digital cameras or smartphones instantly.
In May 2018, Canon announced it had finally sold its last film camera, eight years after it stopped making them.
Floppy Disks
Floppy disks were so common in late 20th-century culture. It was a type of data storage medium that first appeared in the 1970s. The first type was the 8-inch floppy disk that had the capacity to store just 80 kilobytes of data. The next type was a 3.5-inch floppy disk that was able to store 1.44 MB. As the size of the floppy disk reduced, their storage capacity increased.
The disks were made obsolete by the mid-2000s and have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater data storage capacity and data transfer speed, such as USB flash drives, memory cards, optical discs, and storage available through local computer networks and cloud storage.
The floppy disk icon has been immortalized as a “save icon” by most software applications.
Landlines
Traditional telephone systems like landlines are slowly becoming a thing of the past. They had dominated for more than a century since the first phone call was made in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant, Thomas Watson.
People have long moved from the landline era to the mobile era where anyone can easily move about with their cell phones.
