Technology makes head-spinning advancements every year at an exponential rate, so not all that seems perfect at the moment will live forever. In the 1960s, there were tons of gizmos and gadgets that seemed essential, but have been lost to time. From adding machines to carpet sweepers, here are 15 huge ‘60s products that are only good for collecting dust today.
Rotary Phones
Everybody had these things in their houses until the 1980s when touch-tones made a big splash. It feels like they mostly exist on movie sets, today.
Carbon Paper
Before photocopiers popped off in the ‘80s, carbon paper was its own copy machine. Coated on one side with a waxy piece of ‘60s magic technology, writing or typing on top of this would imprint the paper underneath, making a copy.
Typewriters
Before computer word processing, typewriters were everything. That’s no life for me; imagine making a mistake on a typewriter. They’re still used by some annoying people to this day.
Phone Books
The modern internet really did away with the need for these, but there was a time when the easiest and fastest way to get some information like an address or phone number was to flip through the pages of the phone book. Sure it took forever, but it worked.
Milk Crates
Milk delivery used to be extremely common; rarely were you picking up milk at the grocery store. Your milkman would deliver it farm-fresh in a big crate, and that would be that. Simpler days.
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8-Track Tapes
If you were listening to an album in your car in the mid- to late-1960s, you were listening to an 8-track. Cassette tapes in the ‘80s killed the 8-track off, but much like typewriters, they are still relished by annoying people who swear it’s the best way to listen to audio.
Slide Projectors
How were you supposed to show off boring family photos in the 1960s without Facebook? Slide projectors, that’s how. There was something special about gathering all your friends to your sofa and forcing them to take a look at your last vacation.
Adding Machines
In the ‘70s, electronic calculators became the standard, so cumbersome adding machines (which weighed anywhere from 5 to 20 pounds) were an easy thing to ditch. By the ‘80s, not a soul was using them.
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TV Dinner Trays
If you ask me, a TV dinner tray is still a grand slam of an invention. Sometimes it’s just you, and your dinner, and the most recent season of some show you’re binge-watching. That’s a good night right there, and eating dinner conveniently off your lap makes it even better. But most people retired these decades ago.
Manual Lawn Mowers
You can still buy a manual lawnmower if you want to have less fun and increase the time it takes to do this chore, but when electric and gas-powered lawn mowers took over in the ’70s, manual mowers died quickly.
Carpet Sweepers
These are still around, but obsolete is still the only word to describe them: vacuums have landed. We don’t need these anymore.
Cigarette Vending Machines
There was almost nowhere you wouldn’t see a cigarette vending machine in the 1960s; diners, parks, airports, and of course, bars, were all popular pots for these machines. The anti-smoking movement of the 90s really put a stink on these things.
TV Antennas
You needed these jokers to pick up a signal on your TV prior to the rise of cable TV. Once TVs went digital in 2009, these things were ancient history.
Viewmaster
Look, there was no Nintendo in the ‘60s. People had to entertain themselves by looking at 3D images through a weird set of binoculars. When video games did finally get popular, these things died pretty quickly.
