21 gadgets that'll make you feel really old
When you'd dial, you'd hear that mesmerizing tick-tick-tick. Those electrical pulses were necessary to connect with others. A "modern" version of the rotary dial was introduced in 1904, which eventually became available on the Bell System service in 1919. We didn't start pushbutton dialing until 1962.
Betamax
Before Netflix and movie streaming, we used Betamax to watch stuff on demand. The cassettes were a little clunky, and you sometimes used a separate gadget altogether just to rewind and fast forward.
iMac G3
Remember those candy-colored iMacs? Apple came out with the iMac G3, an all-in-one personal computer, back in 1998. Nevermind the specs, these babies came in blue, red, teal and more!
The boombox
And we thought we were so cool. We used to call this boombox "portable." In fact, many of us used to think we were super-cool carrying the darn thing on our shoulders in public. Little did we know a pocket-sized gadget would one day hold thousands of our favorite songs.
Game Boy
Back in 1989, your handheld video game was not a touch screen. Heck, you were lucky if it even had color. Even still, we loved playing Tetris on our Game Boys.
Commodore 64
This clunky thing is the Commodore 64, an 8-bit home computer that came out in 1982. People also used to call it "breadbox" and "bullnose" because of its shape and color.
Dot matrix printer
The sound that a dot matrix printer makes will be foreign to most who were born after the '90s. To many of us, that print head moving back and forth is like a nostalgic beat. Pictured is the Tally 5040 Pasbook, one of these printers that actually used an ink-soaked cloth ribbon to make magic happen.
The joystick
Two of these joysticks came with your Atari 2600, the video game console released in October 1977.
Cassette tapes
Before CDs and mp3s, we had these cassette tapes to deal with. At times, they'd get tangled, rip or not play at all in our radios, boomboxes and answering machines.
The typewriter
Floppy disks
These floppy disks, also known as diskettes, used to hold our files once upon a time. But, you'd practically have to buy them in bulk because one couldn't nearly hold as many files as our thumb drives do today.
CDs
Although compact discs are a novel idea, they're not so fab when they get all scratched up and skip. You can still buy them these days, but why would you when you can simply download your favorite tunes or stream them on your music player.
MS-DOS
This screen might be familiar to you. It's what we'd see when we'd start our computers back in the day. The Microsoft Disk Operating System, known as MS-DOS, also helped us find files, troubleshoot problems and more.
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came out in Japan in 1983 and North America in 1985. The box came with Super Mario Bros, one of the best-selling video games of all time.
Nokia 3310
Released in late 2000, the Nokia 3310 mobile phone was somewhat compact, kind of thick, offered no color and wasn't a touch screen. But, you could play Snake on it, so that was pretty cool.
The Polaroid camera
In 2008, Polaroid announced it would no longer produce film or cameras of the Polaroid. Sales of chemical film has been declining since the introduction of digital cameras. Even still, many of us miss the instant shoot-and-print.
Vinyl records
If you're a DJ, you might still use them, but even most of you have gone digital, too.
Palm Pilot
Remember those good ol' Palm PDAs? They came out in 1997 and were used to create messages, reply and forward messages and store information... But that was pretty much it - nothing like the iPad and other tablets we use today.
Zip drive
The Iomega Zip drive was a removable disk storage system that came out in 1994. It held all your files after floppy disks and before thumb drives.
The walkman
The walkman would also play your cassette tapes. We used them a lot in the '80s before mp3 players came on the scene in the '90s. We were so impressed with the waterproof ones, too.
Sega Master System
Remember the Sega Master System? The video game console, which was released in 1985 before Sega Genesis, played both Sega cards and cartridges. One of our favorite games to play on it was Ghostbusters.
