Results: From Groundbreaking to Obsolete

Encyclopedias - At one time, if you were in school and needed to do a research a paper, you started with an encyclopedia. This meant physically going to a real library, or, if you were lucky, you had a set at home. There were a variety of encyclopedia publishers, but Encyclopedia Britannica is viewed as the most respected. Print publishing first began in 1768 and continued until 2012 when they were no longer printed due to low sales. Did you have a set of encyclopedias when you were growing up?

Walkman and MP3 players - During the 1980s, personal music players and digital music formats were one of he biggest technological inventions. The Sony Walkman was invented in 1979 and used cassette tapes (also obsolete) for music and AA batteries for power. Eventually cassette tapes were replaced with CDs (compact discs). The MP3 player first appeared in 1999 and was a source of revenue for computer giant Apple. Officially, Apple released their last iPod (their twist on the MP3 player) in 2015 with the sixth-generation iPod Touch. Today, most people use their smartphones, smart speakers, or other digital devices to play a variety of audio file formats. Did you have a Walkman or MP3 player?

Floppy Disks - Today when you need to save a file on your laptop, you either save it to the cloud, an external drive, or a USB flash drive. But back in the day, there was the floppy disk, invented by IBM in 1967. The original versions were flexible, thin, square pieces of technology that measured 8 inches. In 1981, it was reduced to a 5.25-inch disk, and held 360 kilobytes of data. The disk later morphed into a 3.5-inch rigid diskette that held 1.44 megabytes of data. Did you own a computer that used a floppy disk?

Polaroid Instant Cameras - Before the instant camera, if you took pictures with a traditional film-based camera, you had to use the entire roll (usually at least 24), take it to a photo developer, and wait for the pictures. Polaroid's 600 series instant camera debuted in 1981 and allowed people to "instantly" (about 7 to 15 minutes) see their pictures. Next, digital cameras and self-print photo processing booths were widespread. However, the Polaroid 600 series cameras continue to be a fan favorite and even have a refurbished sales option. Do you remember when you took a picture with a Polaroid instant camera and had to shake the picture and wait for it to develop?