Answering Machine
Hit its cultural apex, and revealed its fatal flaw (beep!), in 1996’s Swingers.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Foldable Road Map
Pay $12.95 and have Snoop Dogg call out turns on your TomTom.
Photo: Getty Images
Cathode Ray Tube Television
The classic set was finally outsold by the flat-screen LCD in 2007.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Incandescent Light Bulb
Already banned in Europe, they’ll be phased out here beginning 2012.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Paid Pornography
Five of the 100 top U.S. websites are “tube sites,” a.k.a. free-porn portals.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Smoking in Bars
Violations are down 70.4 percent since the post-ban high in 2004.
Photo: Peter Morrison/AP
Fax Machine
Increasingly obsolete, yet still big in Japan, the No. 1 faxer in the world.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Hydrox Cookie
The Oreo precursor now exists only in cookies-and-cream form at Carvel.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Cassette Tape
Sales plummeted from 442 million in 1990 to 274 thousand in 2007.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
French Franc
Au revoir, Paul Cézanne 100 FF bill! Bonjour, baroque and rococo “100!
Photos: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
Floppy Disk
Storage capacity: 1.5 MB, about half the size of a single three-minute MP3.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Phone Book
Automatically delivered, seldom used, still good as a booster seat.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Polaroid Photo
Not dead yet! Polaroid plans to again sell film and cameras by mid-2010.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Bank Deposit Slip
Check-reading ATMs (no slip, no envelope) will soon be standard.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
Subway Token
Cost when introduced in 1953: 15”. Cost when retired in 2003: $1.50.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
The Rolodex
Outlived contemporaries the Autodex, Swivodex, Punchodex, and Clipodex, but can’t beat back the digitized address book.
Photo: Hannah Whitaker
