You’re walking down the street when you suddenly remember you need to call your bank.
Oh no, your phone battery’s at 1%! You look around and here it is: a pay phone booth!
And even better, there’s a phone book inside with the number you need. Come to think of
it, though, how many other seemingly obsolete things are still out there? And why?
1. Fax machines If you were born in the 2000s, you probably
haven’t even heard of them. To use a fax machine, you need a printed copy of your document
and the recipient has to own another such machine too. Bulky and pretty unreliable,
fax machines became a thing of the past in the late 90s, when emails appeared, allowing
documents to be sent instantly and printed out by the receiving party. That is, except
in many hospitals they still use this technology. Despite having electronic records, they don’t
share them with each other for many reasons and thus rely on this outdated piece of equipment.
Hopefully, you’ll never have to visit a hospital, but if you do, don’t forget to
take a selfie with this digital dinosaur! 2. Photo labs
Back in the second half of the 20th century, developing films with your vacation photos
was all the rage. You had only 24 or 36 photos you could take before your film ended, so
you took them carefully and then went to a photo lab to see what you had. Today, with
smartphones capable of taking superior quality pictures in any number you like, developing
photos is a thing only professional photographers still do. So photo labs have gone, but not
completely — and they still offer their services to those interested.
3. Encyclopedias How long has it been since you took an actual
book in your hands when you needed explanation of some term or phenomenon instead of just
googling it? Let me know down in the comments! I bet some people haven’t done it in their
life at all. But you can still see paper encyclopedias on the shelves of bookstores — and many
people, surprisingly, still use them. I guess some just can’t help holding a hardcover
book in their hands. Speaking of which… 4. Physical books and bookstores
In the age when we have e-readers designed specifically to rid you of the need to carry
physical copies of books, and even apps for phones and tablets allowing you to download
as many e-books as you like, it’s kinda strange to see so many bookstores still up
and running. Yet there they are, although now many of them have changed their profile
a lot. Most importantly, a bookshop has become not just a joint where you can buy a new novel
by your favorite author, but a place to sit back, have a cup of tea or coffee, and relax
in a comfortable chair, reading right there. Admit it, reading in comfort and without a
hurry is a much more pleasant experience than doing it in transport or even at home where
there are so many distractions. 5. VHS tapes
Gone are the days when you recorded family events on a Super-8 and watched it later from
VHS tapes on your player. And even CD players that came later are now a rarity — everything’s
on hard drives now or even on the web, where it’ll stay for a very long time, if not
forever, or replaced itself by something newer or better. But surprisingly, though they’re
gone from households, there are still VHS tapes that are incredibly rare and valuable
even today. For example, there’s a Star Wars sealed box tape for sale on eBay that
costs $3,500. And owners of Disney Black Diamond series video cassettes, which got its name
for a black diamond symbol on every box, sometimes ask astronomical sums for their treasures.
It’s best to do your research, though, because some of the prices are simply crazy for no
good reason. 6. Photo albums
Some decades ago, any family reunion eventually came to a point where the hosts retrieved
a huge family album and started showing their guests all the photos in their archive. Today,
with Instagram and digital pictures all around, it seems obsolete, but almost any photographer
you ask will offer you to make a photo album of your own. That’s because such things
never really get old: a nicely decorated album with your photos may even become a good present
to someone you love, or just be a warm reminder of things you’d like to remember.
7. Old cell phones A smartphone is basically a full-blown portable
computer that you can use for a variety of things, from checking your social media to
actually doing all your work on it. This can’t be said of the first mobile phones of the
90s and early 2000s, which were little more than bricks with buttons that you could talk
and send short messages with. Still, they’re quite popular today, and for a good reason:
unlike smartphones and tablets, these simple devices are very hard to track, so if you’re
worried about being watched, an old cell phone is a really good choice. Better yet, you can
use… 8. Pay phones
It’s really convenient to have your own phone to call anyone from anywhere in the
world, but cellular network is not as sturdy as we all wish it was, and it doesn’t cover
the whole planet yet. In some distant areas of the world, you’d be stranded without
any connection if not for pay phones that are still installed in many countries. Also,
in case of a natural disaster, pay phones often remain intact while both cellular network
and landlines go down — they’re built to withstand a lot of damage and ensure connection
even in dire circumstances. 9. Pagers
Wait, now, what’s a pager? It’s a little device, like a small radio, that receives
messages sent to it from a phone. You can’t send messages from it, so it’s only works
as a receiver. They were extremely popular at some point in the 90s, but for obvious
reasons they soon became outdated and replaced by more versatile mobile phones. But pagers
haven’t become some old junk — rather, one of them just might save your life one
day. Paramedics and emergency care workers use this little piece of tech in their everyday
jobs even today. Pagers are more resilient, able to take a lot of damage before turning
off, they have much more battery life than a smartphone, and their design is conveniently
intuitive, so they’re perfect for such conditions. 10. Copper pennies
These coins are probably the most useless piece of stuff on my list: if you’ve met
a person who actually uses pennies to pay for something, pat them on the back. By and
large, pennies are next to worthless, but they’re still being widely circulated. And
if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll even find out that the cost of producing a penny is
more than it’s actually worth: 1.7 cents for a 1 penny coin.
11. Vinyl records Hey, vintage lovers out there, you’ll probably
say that vinyl discs aren’t obsolete in the least, but that’s what they are in our
modern age, sorry. But in any case, the rugged, warm quality of sound they give and the feeling
of authenticity when listening to the great bands of the 20th century makes lots of audiophiles
around the world collect vinyl records and keep them as the treasure they certainly are.
12. Landlines Who uses landline anymore when there are smartphones?
Well, the decline of stationary phones is obvious, and they’re all but gone from households,
but many businesses still cling to this piece of technology, and in some countries banks
won’t even give you a loan if you don’t own a landline. As they explain, having a
landline means you own a home or at least have some place to live — as if having a
job record wasn’t enough. Anyway, although we’re looking at landlines’ complete disappearance
in the coming years, they’re still quite strong in many ways.
Finally: What’s more lasting than all of this technology? Graham crackers. Delicious!
Haven’t changed in over a hundred years, and will probably outlast us all! Don’t
you just love graham crackers? Hey, if you learned something new today, then
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