Have You Used Any of These Obsolete Devices?

During World War I, the U.S. Army established the ​​Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit, a team of 223 women who operated telephone switchboards within the U.S. Army Signal Corps. These women received the nickname “Hello Girls,” since they began each call with the word “hello.”

The Nintendo Gameboy was introduced in 1989 and sold 118 million units before it was discontinued in 2003. During that time, the handheld system’s bestselling game was the iconic puzzle game Tetris, which sold 35 million copies.

America Online was released to the public in 1991 and connected users to the internet using dial-up modems. Dial-up modems remained the primary method to access the internet until faster wireless modems began to replace them in the early 2010s.

Long-distance communication via telegraph dates back to 1843 — predating the telephone. However, modern fax machines, with the capability to transmit images and text, were introduced in 1964 by the Xerox Corporation, under the name Long Distance Xerography.

In 1979, Sony introduced the TPS-L2 model of the Walkman, the world’s first portable music player. The ability to listen to cassette tapes on the go made the Walkman a massive hit.

Plastic game cartridges used to be the most common method for storing video game data, but as the 1990s came to a close, video game companies began using optical discs as the standard game-storage device. The Nintendo 64, released in 1996, was the last console to use game cartridges.

Early precursors of the pager were used by the military and law enforcement as far back as 1921, but the device didn’t become available to the public until 1958. The following year, Motorola, one of the leading manufacturers of the product, named it the “pager,” which became the device’s most common name.

Thomas Edison invented the tin foil phonograph that could record and reproduce sound in 1877. The machine could play recordings using a needle on tin foil cylinders, which were gradually replaced by wax and then vinyl discs.

Morse code is an alphanumeric system invented by Samuel Morse in the 1830s for sending messages using the electric telegraph. The code was expanded into the International Morse code at a conference in Europe in 1851.

The compact disc was invented in 1979 and became available to the public in 1982. That year, ABBA released “The Visitors” on CD, becoming the first music group to release an album using the new format.

In the 1980s and 1990s, PC users grabbed floppy disks to save files and run programs on their computers. Though floppy disks have been virtually obsolete since the late 2000s, their image lives on as the “save file” icon for most computer software.

In the 1980s, the big technology war was Sony’s Betamax versus JVC’s VHS video technology. Ultimately, VHS won the fight and reigned supreme in both home recording and buying/renting studio-made movies — at least until VHS was replaced by DVDs in the 1990s.

In 1873, American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes signed a contract with E. Remington and Sons to manufacture the world’s first commercial typewriters. Mark Twain became the first author to write a book on a Remington typewriter with “Life on the Mississippi” in 1883.

Sundials are the world’s oldest timekeeping devices, and versions of them date back to at least 3500 BCE. When in sunlight, the devices cast a shadow that changes throughout the day, and the length of the shadow indicates the time of day.

Slide projectors first hit the market in the 1930s as a way to display still images to large audiences. Kodak’s Carousel model, which featured a rotating circular slide tray, was introduced in 1962 and is considered one of the most influential iterations of the gadget.