Oh no, your phone battery’s at 1%! You look around and here it is: a pay phone booth!

And even better, there’s a phone book inside with the number you need. Come to think of

it, though, how many other seemingly obsolete things are still out there? And why?

1. Fax machines If you were born in the 2000s, you probably

haven’t even heard of them. To use a fax machine, you need a printed copy of your document

and the recipient has to own another such machine too. Bulky and pretty unreliable,

fax machines became a thing of the past in the late 90s, when emails appeared, allowing

documents to be sent instantly and printed out by the receiving party. That is, except

in many hospitals they still use this technology. Despite having electronic records, they don’t

share them with each other for many reasons and thus rely on this outdated piece of equipment.

Hopefully, you’ll never have to visit a hospital, but if you do, don’t forget to

take a selfie with this digital dinosaur! 2. Photo labs

Back in the second half of the 20th century, developing films with your vacation photos

was all the rage. You had only 24 or 36 photos you could take before your film ended, so

you took them carefully and then went to a photo lab to see what you had. Today, with

smartphones capable of taking superior quality pictures in any number you like, developing

photos is a thing only professional photographers still do. So photo labs have gone, but not

completely — and they still offer their services to those interested.

3. Encyclopedias How long has it been since you took an actual

book in your hands when you needed explanation of some term or phenomenon instead of just

googling it? Let me know down in the comments! I bet some people haven’t done it in their

life at all. But you can still see paper encyclopedias on the shelves of bookstores — and many

people, surprisingly, still use them. I guess some just can’t help holding a hardcover

book in their hands. Speaking of which… 4. Physical books and bookstores

In the age when we have e-readers designed specifically to rid you of the need to carry

physical copies of books, and even apps for phones and tablets allowing you to download

as many e-books as you like, it’s kinda strange to see so many bookstores still up

and running. Yet there they are, although now many of them have changed their profile

a lot. Most importantly, a bookshop has become not just a joint where you can buy a new novel

by your favorite author, but a place to sit back, have a cup of tea or coffee, and relax

in a comfortable chair, reading right there. Admit it, reading in comfort and without a

hurry is a much more pleasant experience than doing it in transport or even at home where

there are so many distractions. 5. VHS tapes

Gone are the days when you recorded family events on a Super-8 and watched it later from

VHS tapes on your player. And even CD players that came later are now a rarity — everything’s

on hard drives now or even on the web, where it’ll stay for a very long time, if not

forever, or replaced itself by something newer or better. But surprisingly, though they’re

gone from households, there are still VHS tapes that are incredibly rare and valuable

even today. For example, there’s a Star Wars sealed box tape for sale on eBay that

costs $3,500. And owners of Disney Black Diamond series video cassettes, which got its name

for a black diamond symbol on every box, sometimes ask astronomical sums for their treasures.

It’s best to do your research, though, because some of the prices are simply crazy for no

good reason. 6. Photo albums

Some decades ago, any family reunion eventually came to a point where the hosts retrieved

a huge family album and started showing their guests all the photos in their archive. Today,

with Instagram and digital pictures all around, it seems obsolete, but almost any photographer

you ask will offer you to make a photo album of your own. That’s because such things

never really get old: a nicely decorated album with your photos may even become a good present

to someone you love, or just be a warm reminder of things you’d like to remember.

7. Old cell phones A smartphone is basically a full-blown portable

computer that you can use for a variety of things, from checking your social media to

actually doing all your work on it. This can’t be said of the first mobile phones of the

90s and early 2000s, which were little more than bricks with buttons that you could talk

and send short messages with. Still, they’re quite popular today, and for a good reason:

unlike smartphones and tablets, these simple devices are very hard to track, so if you’re

worried about being watched, an old cell phone is a really good choice. Better yet, you can

use… 8. Pay phones

It’s really convenient to have your own phone to call anyone from anywhere in the

world, but cellular network is not as sturdy as we all wish it was, and it doesn’t cover

the whole planet yet. In some distant areas of the world, you’d be stranded without

any connection if not for pay phones that are still installed in many countries. Also,

in case of a natural disaster, pay phones often remain intact while both cellular network

and landlines go down — they’re built to withstand a lot of damage and ensure connection

even in dire circumstances. 9. Pagers

Wait, now, what’s a pager? It’s a little device, like a small radio, that receives

messages sent to it from a phone. You can’t send messages from it, so it’s only works

as a receiver. They were extremely popular at some point in the 90s, but for obvious

reasons they soon became outdated and replaced by more versatile mobile phones. But pagers

haven’t become some old junk — rather, one of them just might save your life one

day. Paramedics and emergency care workers use this little piece of tech in their everyday

jobs even today. Pagers are more resilient, able to take a lot of damage before turning

off, they have much more battery life than a smartphone, and their design is conveniently

intuitive, so they’re perfect for such conditions. 10. Copper pennies

These coins are probably the most useless piece of stuff on my list: if you’ve met

a person who actually uses pennies to pay for something, pat them on the back. By and

large, pennies are next to worthless, but they’re still being widely circulated. And

if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll even find out that the cost of producing a penny is

more than it’s actually worth: 1.7 cents for a 1 penny coin.

11. Vinyl records Hey, vintage lovers out there, you’ll probably

say that vinyl discs aren’t obsolete in the least, but that’s what they are in our

modern age, sorry. But in any case, the rugged, warm quality of sound they give and the feeling

of authenticity when listening to the great bands of the 20th century makes lots of audiophiles

around the world collect vinyl records and keep them as the treasure they certainly are.

12. Landlines Who uses landline anymore when there are smartphones?

Well, the decline of stationary phones is obvious, and they’re all but gone from households,

but many businesses still cling to this piece of technology, and in some countries banks

won’t even give you a loan if you don’t own a landline. As they explain, having a

landline means you own a home or at least have some place to live — as if having a

job record wasn’t enough. Anyway, although we’re looking at landlines’ complete disappearance

in the coming years, they’re still quite strong in many ways.

Finally: What’s more lasting than all of this technology? Graham crackers. Delicious!

Haven’t changed in over a hundred years, and will probably outlast us all! Don’t

you just love graham crackers? Hey, if you learned something new today, then

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