1. Polaroid 300 Instant Camera
Remember back in the 1970s when you snapped a Polaroid and then had to sit there and watch it develop?
Polaroid is still making instant film cameras in 2012. A testament to the delayed gratification shooter of old, this throwback Polaroid 300 employs four lighting settings and auto-flash to freeze any moment, reproducing a physical copy of the scene as quickly as you can take pleasure in it.
2. Toshiba DVD/VCR Player
This VCR boasts one-touch recording and that classically ugly black boxy look to make all your friends and family wonder if they’ve been transported back to the mid-1990s when they spot this irrelevant relic of a gadget displayed in your media room.
3. 56K Serial Controller Faxmodem
A gadget that is incomprehensibly still being produced. In case 56 kbit/s still seems a bit wild for you, but that’s only the modem’s theoretical speed. FCC regulations limit receiving speeds to 53 Kbps, plus actual speeds vary depending on several other factors.
4. USB External Floppy Disk Drive
At just 1.44MB per disk, you can store one high-res photo on maybe three or four of these. Notebooks and desktops stopped coming with floppy drives years ago, but now you can backup files like it’s 1986 again with the Bytecc USB external floppy disk drive.
5. Portable AM/FM Cassette Player
The Coby CX-244 Portable AM/FM Cassette Player comes with a one-touch, automatic level recorder.
If saving your documents so you can edit and reproduce them later seems too futuristic for your 19th century brain, consider this typewriter series from Brother. Whether you’re a technophobe or just a time traveller from the past, at least one of these models is bound to be your perfect machine. Unfortunately, they do use electricity.
6. Crosley Rotary-style Telephones
Did you know they say you’re “dialling” a phone, because phones used to have rotary dials?
7. AT&T Adjunct Answering Machine
Do you miss having a separate machine to take your messages? Now you too can live like Jim Rockford from the Rockford Files with this dedicated answering machine from AT&T’s online store.
8. USB 1.1 4-Port Pocket Hub
Never mind that USB 1.1 was released 14 years ago, that USB 2.0 launched in the year 2000, and that the latest specification, USB 3.0, has been out for a few years. This plucky little USB Pocket Hub accessory from Belkin doesn’t care. It offers four whole Plug-and-Play ports in the outmoded USB 1.1 standard, two generations behind.
