These Victorian Gadgets Used to Live in Every Home, but Now We Have to Ask: ‘What Is It?’

These Victorian Gadgets Used to Live in Every Home, but Now We Have to Ask: ‘What Is It?’
Illustration - Shutterstock | devonx
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Who remembers cassette tapes? You do? Okay, let’s go back a little further. Floppy disks? Maybe you used a landline phone to call your friends in your childhood home, or maybe your dad received notes from his boss via a fax machine. If we’re starting to sound like a movie from the 1980s, then good! It’s throwback time.

If it’s true that everything changes, then it’s also true that whatever we grew up with is what we are used to. Who misses the mechanic ingenuity of the rotary phone? Perhaps VHS players fill you with a wistful nostalgia. On the other hand, you can spot a millennial from a mile away, scrolling expertly across a handheld screen like they were born with a phone surgically attached to their palm.