I have a graphophone but it’s missing some parts*. And of course I don’t have any of the things it’s supposed to play, either. In fact I wonder if I could ebay that sucker…
*at some point long ago a family member used the cone-shaped horn part to change the oil in their car, for example.
Between the Victrola, which we crank up now and then and use, the treadle sewing machine, which is workable, but not used, and the 1940s rotary phones that are plugged in and happily coexisting with DSL, our house has a good many creative anachronisms.
The newest phone in the house is a speakerphone. (Hello, Angels…)
If you’ve got a Victrola pining away in the corner of the basement, it probably just needs a good cleaning, oiling and some fresh needles. (Unless some terrible person used part of it to do car repairs. :eek:)
We did once thread up the treadle machine, and it does sew, but the computerized embroidery machine with the color video screen does a much nicer job. However, post-Armageddon, we will be able to make clothing while everyone else tries to get electricity working again. The phones will probably still be useful as weapons.
I have a wind-up gramophone in working condition from the teens (not a Victrola, as that’s a specific brand; mine was manufactured by a British company). I do have a couple of Edison wax cylinders, but lack the apparatus to play them. Loads of 78s that I fire up on the gramophone sometimes. I hope all the LPs and 45s I’ve kept from my record collecting days don’t count as obsolete, as they get used frequently in one of my classes on a fairly new turntable!
Also in full running condition (and used frequently, as of last weekend, in fact): 1904 Singer treadle machine (just wanted to add that this is my primary sewing machine; I’ve had an electric Singer Toch ‘n’ Sew from about 1968 which I liked, but dislike modern computerised machines…just find my cast-iron 128K more reliable, I guess.), c. 1750 great wheel, c. 1750 clockwinder (not mine, as mine isn’t quite as rustic/primative, but a similar design http://www.churchtownantiques.com/Portals/0/yarn%20winder%202.JPG). There’s also a pre-war Singer featherweight in excellent condition running around here somewhere, and a c. 1935 Scots-built Singer hand crank sewing machine also in good nick. I’ve got my grandmother’s little knitting spool and some other needlework odds and sods that are anywhere from 50 to 100 years old, still in use as needed.
1930s rotary phone here on the shelf that works fine; I’ve also got my grandfather’s radio from 1929, but that needs to be restored. Can’t think of anything else off the top of my head, but I’m so used to growing up and living surrounded by so many old gadgets, I don’t think I really notice.
There’s a Roman lamp, too, but I’m still unpacking from a move, so God knows where it is at the moment.
If you have a graphophone (invented by A G Bell and plays cylinders, not flat disks, as a Victrola [Johnson] or gramophone [Berliner] would), there certainly are collectors who would be interested even in a model which needs work.
Apologies for the double post – I have a huge interest in mechanical music and early recording technology; we do a whole section of a couple lectures and things on it in one of the classes I teach,* so I find it very interesting that you have a graphophone stashed away, even if it’s a bit crippled at the moment! 
- And drive students mad explaining that they must be careful to differentiate among graphophones, gramophones (of which the Victrola is but a subset), phonautographs, phonographs, pareographe, etc, until I think they get quite cross with me.
Born in 1960 so it’s not technology that outdates me, but I’ve got a b&w TV in my home office that I watch the news on many evenings when I get home from work. (Yes, I have a big LCD TV in my living room.)
I want to take that class.
I have a White sewing machine from the 30’s, which I need to change out the electrical wires, it has ceramic conductor plugs, I’m afraid to use it. I also have a hand crank egg beater from the 40’s, I was born in 57. But then again I also have a Commodore 64, an IBM 8088, and a Nintendo Entertainment System, some where in my house.
Sign up early; it closes very quickly every term despite my best efforts to terrorise the students (stroll in late to one of my classes, and you may be required to sing or dance your way to your seat; it depends on my mood that morning.) Faculty have also sat in on particular lectures, and twice my chairman has pulled rank to be a guest lecturer this term alone. Also the students participate in a pool every term to guess which lecture will be the one to get the class shut down, as the admins, whose offices back up to my classroom, get tired of me cranking up the sound system. The straw that breaks the camel’s back, as it were, is usually the punk lecture. One summer term the building got struck by lightening and caught on fire; I was teaching disco at the time, and I feel that it was no accident but rather commentary from the cosmos, if I understand my Plato correctly. I’m still not entirely sure why I teach this class, as my field is Ancient and Medieval, which I also lecture in. I am used to teaching on Brian Wilson in the morning and Athenian naval strategies in the afternoon, though.
To add content: don’t know if this counts as ‘obsolete’ so much as ‘outdated’ but I have a stage coach trunk from 1854 if the newspaper lining is anything to go by. The trunk is made of wood, but decorated with a deerskin on the top and sides; between the skin and the wood of the trunk are folded newspapers (presumably put there to absorb moisture from the skin when it was new). From what little I can see of the exposed paper, there’s an article talking about Cmdr Perry’s work in China.
The lid and sides of the trunk are also decorated with thin leather straps arranged in patterns, accented with hobnails; I bought it because the hobnails on the lid are coincidentally my initials.
The trunk is fragile (I sure as heck wouldn’t hand it over to airline baggage handlers), but the latches all still work, and I use it for storing handspindles and some other smaller textile bits and bobs.
My evil dad ran a Credit Bureau, and I remember wandering around while Mom did the monthly mailings after hours. She used an Addressograph to address all the envelopes. There were trays of embossed address plates that would cycle through the machine.
In the Collecting side up front, there were big Burroughs adding machines, with beveled glass sides, many rows of buttons, and a big crank on the right side. They also had a manually operated check-cutting machine. Today, we say “cut a check,” but this machine actually cut the print into the paper. Dad had a Dictaphone that recorded his letters onto plastic sleeves. His secretary had a playback machine with a foot-pedal to pause the recording.
Early on, the Reporting side worked from a huge bank of file cabinets, but later those were replaced by huge Diebold chain-driven carousel file machines. All that is on computers, now.
There was a pre-Xerox copier called a Thermofax. For some reason, it wouldn’t copy blue ink, and documents had to be sent back to have them signed in black ink.
All but one or two of the typewriters were manual, and a couple of the desks had spring-loaded typewriter shelves that could swoop the typewriter down into the desk when it wasn’t needed. So cool.
Did he look just like your regular dad, but with a goatee?
Yeah, my wife, looking over my shoulder, asked me something like that. No, my evil dad was the only one I ever got. I’m not fishing for sympathy. He’s been dead for years. I’m just making it clear that when I say “Dad,” it is without affection. I hope you don’t have an evil dad.