Throughout the time, people have always created new technologies, which meant phasing out the old ones. This especially took place in the last century, when, with the world wars, the arms race and the cold war (including the race for the moon), technology progress sky-rocketed. However, there are always some people nostalgic over old technology. What is your favorite "phased-out technology"? Mine would have to be the VHS, because I think that in some aspects, it was superior to the current DVD or Bluray.
Not really being romantic but the Betamax had been a great part of my life. I was in college when it became popular and you know that only the rich could afford the Betamax player. Fortunately, I have several friends who invite me to their homes to watch movies on their Betamax player. It was really good, not much of the watching but of the feeling that I could experience such. But then Betamax gave way to VHS which made popular the tape cartridge rentals. There were memberships where you pay a fee so you can rent cheaper regularly. What's in vogue were the pornographic movies that Filipinos were so eager to get hold of. The censorship here was strict that time hence the sex tapes of vhs rentals were really selling hot.
What I miss the most would be the awesome old component stereo systems, and the huge speakers that were used with them. My first one was a second-hand one that I bought from my oldest son when he upgraded. He was a Geek back before the word even became popular, and he had carefully put the system together. It was Pioneer, and had the turntable, dual cassette players, and am/fm radio. I just loved to sit on the floor (that was back in the days when I COULD sit on the floor) , turn the lights off, and just listen to the music in the dark. Mostly, I played my LP stereo albums on the phonegraph; but I also had some cassette tapes, and it seems like one of the cassette players was also auto-reverse, so it played both sides of the tape without having to be turned over manually. I had one of those hanging lamps that were so popular back then, and this one had multi-colored lights that flashed different colors along with the music sound and tempo. I still think how wonderful it was. Even though the little ones that we have now probably have just as good of sound quality; it just is not the same as those old stereo systems were.
Vinyl records almost disappeared a few years ago, but are making a comeback. Most of my music collection is vinyl and I've been converting some of my favourite songs to MP3 format. I'm certainly not going to throw away my record player or vinyl records, though.
My parents had a pianola. This was a regular piano that could also be made to play automatically. To make it play you had to insert a paper roll, sit on the piano stool and pump the bellows by the use of two foot pedals. Air blown through holes in the paper roll activated the piano keys as if they were being played by a professional pianist. We had hundreds of music rolls to choose from and as a child I spent many happy hours "playing" pieces by Brahms, Chopin, Lizt etc. It gave me a lot of pleasure and an appreciation of classical music, which I still like to listen to. This form of technology was obviously replaced by more modern methods of recording music, but as a child I was greatly impressed by it.
Yes, we have seen much devices become obsolete over the years. Things that today's kids would probably not even know about or what we are talking about. For example the electric typewriter, or even the manual typewriter, they would probably wonder how we ever got anything done using these. As for the device I miss I would have to also say VHS, which is now being phased out. I still have VHS tapes, and some of these movies and TV programs that I have aren't available on DVD, maybe they are availble online but I still have DSL, something else that I think is starting to be phased out. After all, remember dial up, yeah I think that is one technology most of us would like to forget.
I had a collection of VHS tapes - not a vast number, but a good few - and I managed to clear out all of them by copying them to CD and DVD. It was a slightly long-winded process, but it didn't involve more than setting the process running and coming back when the programme had finished. At least it clear more spare bedroom out a bit.
This might seem weird but I miss the old cassette recorder I had. I am sure they are probably still around, we used to spend hours and hours recording stuff off the radio (way before Napster) and making all sorts of funny recording about stuff like we were radio announcers. Sure you can do that with your phone and actually video it, but somehow it just does not seem to have the same appeal that it had when I was a kid. We used to save our allowance to get the blank cassette tapes, back then $2.99 felt expensive. I also miss, although I am certain you can get them if you look hard enough, some of the older style office calculators which were the real adding machines. Many of the new ones have all this additional pre-programed baloney that I never use and it is a waste, they seem to break pretty fast. I got lucky at work and found an older version that works well. It just needed new ink cartridges. There is something about the feel and the ease of use. I have come to the conclusion it is the actual distance apart and size of the buttons that makes it flow nice, a bit larger then the newer ones. Much nicer buttons that can take a beating.
Some years ago, I met a former school mate. He is presently jobless because their company closed shop. And when I asked about his job, he said that he used to be a telex operator. Huh, a what? A telex is a message machine using a paper tape with holes. The holes are codes that can be read by a tape reader to interpret for you. His job was to receive the messages on paper tapes and have the reader print a readable copy of the message on a sheet of paper.
My mother still has tons of Beta and VHS cassettes and no working video cassettes recorders/players, but looking to find sometime, somewhere any of these still working. As for typewriters, let me tell you that ,y first job was at an editorial house where I learned to use an IBM composer machine. I always wanted to own one but I couldn't afford it. Years after quitting this job, I found one of those typewriting machines for sale at a pawn house, so cheap that I thought it might not be working. So that I walked away but, on a second thought, I returned to buy it the next day. Too late, someone else had already purchased it and the clerk said cheap price was because this was the maximum amount allowed to lend for devices like this, and not because it would had any defect. :\ Overtime computers substituted composer machines with advantage, but meanwhile I got a Xerox electronic typewriting machine comparable to such IBM, besides a Sharp electric typewriter, a mechanical desktop IBM typewriter, a Canon portable with a digital organizer, and like a dozen of different manual typewriters, most of them still working and stored in the "horrors room" at my parents' home. Even thought, and knowing the heavy use these machine had in my hands, I dream on buying a new or nearly-new manual typewriter for a sole reason; when there is no electricity nor devices battery-operated, a manual typewriter is a blessing! This was the famous IBM composer of my dreams:
What I liked about VHS, was the ability to record anything onto blank tapes from the TV. I have never started recording shows,with DVD technology. The first VHS tape,that we bought, was "Flight of the Navigator".
I hate to say this, because it makes me feel old. I remember about 15 years ago when I got my first iPod - it was one of the first generation ones. I have loved it ever since and take it with me everywhere (I really love music). When I first got it, nobody knew what it was and I had to explain about mp3 players quite a bit. Anyway, I was at the doctor's office the other day, and this young girl (she looked to be in her early 20s), look at my iPod with a puzzled expression on her face and asked me, "Is that an iPod??". Huhh! I can't believe that someone her age wouldn't know what an iPod was, but then got to thinking that everyone now-a-days uses smartphones for all that. I really hope that iPods don't go the way of the VHS, unless of course, it's replaced with something much better!
I hadn't really thought of steel as being "technology" but now that you mention it, I couldn't agree more. There's just something about the feel and weight of something that's made of steel or other good metals as apposed to plastic. I still think of plastic as being cheap. I also wonder about the impact it has on the environment - both in it's construction and it's disposal.
I was a federal government contractor during the 90's, and they were still using telex machines. I'd never heard of them, having come from the private sector, but with all the government waste, you'd think they would have upgraded before that.