10 everyday things that quietly disappeared

How many of these did you use? All illustrations are drawn by our team.

1960s to 2000s

Cassette tapes

The compact cassette was introduced in 1963. Through the 1980s it was the everyday way to carry music: car stereos, portable players and homemade mixtapes. CDs and then digital music pushed it aside.

Into the 1980s

Rotary phones

For decades, home phones had a dial you turned for every digit. Push-button touch-tone phones were introduced in 1963 and slowly replaced rotary dials over the following decades.

Late 1970s to 2000s

VHS tapes

Home video cassettes arrived in the U.S. in the late 1970s and made the weekend trip to the video rental store a ritual. DVDs reached the U.S. in 1997, and the last VCRs were manufactured in 2016.

1970s to 2000s

Floppy disks

Floppy disks started in the early 1970s at 8 inches across, then shrank to 5.25 and 3.5 inches. A high-density 3.5-inch disk held 1.44 MB. The save icon in many programs still shows one.

Until the 2000s

Film cameras

Before phone cameras, a photo meant a roll of film, usually 24 or 36 shots, and a trip to get it developed. You often did not see your pictures for days.

Until the late 2000s

Tube TVs

Cathode-ray tube TVs were deep, heavy and often sat in a wooden cabinet, with rabbit-ear antennas on top. Flat-panel TVs replaced them during the 2000s.

Through the 1990s

Pay phones

Pay phones stood on street corners, in gas stations and at airports. For many years a local call cost a dime in much of the country. New York City removed its last public street pay phones in 2022.

Before GPS

Paper road maps

Folded road maps lived in the glove box and rarely folded back the right way. Gas stations once handed them out to drivers. GPS units and then phone navigation replaced them for most trips.

1990s to early 2000s

Dial-up internet

Dial-up connected your computer through the home phone line, with screeching connection sounds and top speeds of 56 kbps. While you were online, nobody in the house could use the phone.

Dates are approximate and describe general use in the United States.