Rotary Dial Phones are long gone
Dot Matrix printers (at least for the home user)
Manual Credit Card Machines
Still available in some brands of RVs. My folks’ old lake house had these, I was sad to see them replaced when they remodeled.
I’ve seen these around still. Mostly for when phone lines or the store system go down.
SyQuest drives & cartridges
ZIP drives & disks
Mimeograph machines
Ice picks
Linotype machines
Glass milk bottles
Women’s hats with veils
Earth shoes
Hand-held 35mm slide viewers
Pedestal ash trays
Incandescent Christmas tree lights (the ones that got really hot)
Why is that becoming obsolete? The new model humans are anus-less?
I remember that the cartridge-based games on my parents’ old Commodore 64 were much more stable and reliable than the floppy-disc ones.
I remember seeing leaded gasoline for sale 10 or 15 years ago, and it was a big find then. I’m not sure it’s even legal to sell anymore.
Does anyone buy traveler’s checks anymore?
ETA: General, printed encyclopediae (Brittanica, World Book) cannot be long for this world.
Manual-transmission cars. When I bought my last car, I read that 95% of cars manufactured at that time had automatic transmissions. I had to special-order mine.
That was 15 years ago.
[QUOTE=Philster;10487980Soon/next: Formica/laminate counter tops[/QUOTE]
What is going to be used for cheap countertops instead?
I would imagine because of the size.
The new anoscopes have MP3 players installed in them, I guess.
Paper towels or disposables. “Permanent” towels become germ reservoirs very quickly.
Station wagons. It used to be if a car maker made a sedan he had a wagon version of it. SUV’s have taken their place.
Not that I necessarily disbelieve you, but – cite?
Color lenses are still available in what are advertised as more natural, subtle colors (blue, brown, green, etc.). I would be hard-pressed to call my beloved (bright) green lenses natural though. (They’re Accu-Vue.)
Can you still buy a mouse with a roller ball?
Are you talking about in public restrooms, or in private homes? Because the shelves around me in Wal*mart, Target, Penny’s etc are chock full of Hand Towels, and they ain’t disappearing from the average home anytime soon…
Daily newspapers. I doubt they’ll completely disappear, but they’ll probably be restricted to no more than a few large cities. Other towns will have weeklies or no paper at all.
I’ve heard some buzz that compact discs may be on the way out. I don’t really know, but can someone confirm or refute this?
Mercury vapor lamps (in outdoor lighting fixtures) are getting rarer and rarer. I remember when I was a kid, 15-20 years ago, there were still plenty of those “cold” white/greenish/purplish lamps illuminating streets in my hometown (Luxembourg-City). They have since been mostly replaced by high-pressure sodium (orange) and more recently, metal-halide ones (“warm” white).
Why yes, I AM an outdoor-lighting geek!
They always were. They are also, however, more expensive than disk-based and SD card- or Flash-based systems because they require specialized hardware. In addition, you can fit more data on a disk these days. Finally, of course, with broadband penetrating the hinterest of the hinterlands in this country buying games on any physical medium will soon be obsolete.
Other examples:
Traditional modems as opposed to DSL modems. This also means the end of modems that aren’t also routers and, therefore, the idea that only one person in the house can be online at once.
Nine-pin serial ports on commodity computers. The RS-232 will hang on for a lot longer in specialist roles but the last thing the average schlub needed one for was the old-fashioned voiceband modem. I’ve even been seeing USB ports in hobbyist breadboards.
I don’t think manual transmission cars are on the endangered species list at all. Many European sports cars come standard with manual transmissions and, as for Japanese makes, you can still get most Toyota models with a manual transmission…I know this because my Solara has a 5-speed manual transmision. Yes, I had to request it, but Toyota had no problem getting one for me. I believe the same holds for Honda.
My list:
- Bernoulli boxes
- Vanilla creme-filled Hostess Fruit Pies (with chocolate frosting on top. Yum)
- Jazz drives and cartridges
- Kick-start motorcycles
- Kellogg’s Danish-Go-Rounds (Very old, I know, but man, I miss them)
- Telex machines (these were popular with business before the Fax machine)
- Fax machines
- 3-piece men’s suits
- Roaming office workstations
- Wired remotes (for anything)
- Depilatory powders for men
I was going to add skinny ties for men, but I think they’re coming back.
When I was a kid, I can remember seeing these cloth towel “strips” hanging in public restrooms (particularly in rural areas). The towel strip was suspended from a large metal box, often with a mirror on the front; I think there was some mechanism for rotating/wringing the towel strip.