8 Gadgets From Back-In-The-Day

Do you own any of these still? Check out the Top 8 gadgets that are obsolete now@!LaserDisc
A precursor to the DVD, the LaserDisc emerged in the early '80s. It offered a high-quality image, but it was fairly expensive. It was popular enough to be in 2 percent of households in the 1990s. In January 2009, Pioneer pulled the plug.

Floppy disk
As the first portable storage device for personal computers, the floppy disk revolutionized home technology in the 1980s and 1990s. As rewritable CDs, thumb drives and zip drives surfaced, the floppy disk became less useful. Apple removed the floppy disk drive from its iMac in 1998 and Dell followed suit in 2003.

VHS and VCR
The advent of the VCR in 1976 was monumental. It revolutionized the film industry and brought movies home to the masses via the VHS tapes it played. The VCR hit its peak in the late '80s and early '90s, when the price tag - at first in the thousands - dropped into the low hundreds. Its popularity declined in the late '90s thanks to the DVD player. In October 2005, "A History of Violence" was the last major Hollywood release to be made in the VHS format.

Music cassette tape
Whether you bought prerecorded albums or made your own "mix tapes," everyone was playing tunes at home, in the car, or even walking down the street with a boom box in hand. The cassette was the primary way to listen to music until it was overshadowed by CDs in the 1990s. The tapes were discontinued by major music labels in 2005.

Polaroid instant camera
The Polaroid instant camera developed photos within minutes of snapping a picture. As digital cameras became the norm in 2007, Polaroid stopped producing its instant cameras.

Eight-track
The eight-track tape was the technology that seized America's attention in the '60s and '70s. The precursor to the cassette tape, the eight-track was a magnetic tape sound-recording device for luxury cars that was introduced by the Ford Motor Company in 1965. By 1988, the last eight-tracks were released by major music labels.

Carousel slide projectors
The carousel slide projector was a popular way to view slides in large-scale full color. The circular tray was filled with slides and the projector showed them on a screen. Kodak discontinued the product in 2004.

Ditto machine
Before there were photocopiers, scanners and printers, there was the Ditto Machine. The Ditto Machine was a printing method that transferred ink onto a master copy made of smooth, waxy paper. An alcohol-based fluid was then applied to transfer the image to a copy. By the mid 1990s, the Ditto was virtually extinct.