Obsolete technologies - Topics

Studios sit on back catalogs recorded on formats no machine can still play Typewriters survive in evidence rooms and court filings that refuse electronic forms Why some technologies vanish in five years while others take fifty Obsolete military hardware is often sold on rather than scrapped Floppy disks lingered in industrial machines long after home computers dropped them Landline telephones are still installed in homes that will never use them Broadcasters still carry teletext because it costs almost nothing to keep running Why companies keep paying to maintain software nobody wants anymore Which obsolete technologies still quietly hold up critical infrastructure The skill that disappeared when typesetting moved to desktop publishing VHS tapes won the format war against Betamax and then disappeared anyway The planned obsolescence debate: when manufacturers design products to be replaced Orphaned technology keeps working after the company that made it disappears CRT monitors gave way to flat panels but retro gamers still hunt them down A list of dead formats and devices that people still argue about preserving Collecting vintage electronics has turned into a serious hobby and market Economic obsolescence hits a factory when its product dies rather than its machines What museums of failed technology actually teach visitors Water clocks lost to mechanical escapements because they froze and clogged Telex networks once connected businesses worldwide before email made them pointless Videotex failed in America and ran for decades in France as Minitel How much of the old technology we discard is still perfectly functional