I 've had a few ancient office gizmos that are sadly obsolete:

-- a pair of beautiful shiny bakelite-knob ended stampers. These devices held a roll of stamps, and had a felt pad that was kept wet though a water reservoir. You put the stamper on the corner of your envelope, pressed down, and it applied a licked stamp to the envelope.

--a fluid duplicator (those gloriously cool fragrant purple colored texts). This was my family business. I had all the supplies and parts to make this work for years after xerography was the norm, even red and green inked stencil sheets.

-- an Auto-typist unit. Also family business. No fools, they could see the world of Word processing coming. For several years before IBM's memory typewriter, these gizmos were STATE OF THE ART. An electric typewriter's keys were connected to the Auto Typist unit through hanger wires & bellows. It was operated by punched paper rolls that look just like Player Piano rolls. The sophisticated rolls my aunt stamped out had up to 50 different selections, and was used by hospital labs for reports, college admission offices TRW, all the large companies in the midwest for that brief time. At the end of it's time they were used by radio evangelists to do personalized "hand typed" letters and for mall con men (remember indoor shopping malls... those seem to be getting obsolete here'bouts, too!) who gussied it up with lights and fake tape reels as a "computer" to analyze yer hand writing or tell your astrological fortune.

-- Saddest to me is the clothing that is obsolete - stuff I loved that even a "vintage" geek wouldn't wear. (I know because my nieces scooped up all the primo 70s embroidered denim clothing in the 90s and left me only the prom dresses and Quiana shirts)

-- My electric typewriter. I still wish I'd kept the Selectric with all the font balls - there were a number of years in the transition to all computers allthetime when three part "self carbon: forms for art shows were a nightmare if you let folks hand write them! Also really useful for filing out forms that come to you from OUTSIDE a computer, pre printed (Imagine that!)

--First computer in the house, a TRS80. I had to work VERY HARD to give that away.

-- If I live a few more years, my sewing machine will be obsolete. I love my Singer, now covered in Mary Englebreit stickers. It was what seems to have been a very early or one model only Touchtronic that has little dimples on the bobbins. Most bobbins won't work on it, even if they fit, if they don't have that penpoint sized dimple. Research found that the only factory that made THOSE bobbins burned down, and they just didn't make them anywhere else afterwards. So, I'm down to two dozen precious fragile plastic bobbins -when they're gone the machine is unusable.

--Reference BOOKS.(just cause they call it the same thing online doesen't mean it is - you don't use them, or browse them the same!) Dictionaries. Thesaurus. Bartlett's Quotations. The Elements of Style, etc. and Library Card Catalogs!

-- photographic slides. I remember when they got rid of the huge collection of slides in the Cleveland Museum of Art's library when they had them digitized. I have a huge collection of slides I used (DUAL Projectors, even) I used in doing art lectures that I supplemented there - when they were gone, it was like losing old friends. Then I suppose *I* became obsolete as an art teacher.

There's some stuff I'm happy is obsolete
-- long tongue pull tabs for pop cans that people made into all sorts of atrocious "craft" items.
-- ash trays at every table at a restaurant
--Having to cash/deposit your paycheck every week instead of auto deposit
--asbestos pads for putting hot things on.
--Canvas Tents (heavy, soggy, mildewy)

This question reminds me of an wickedly interesting party a friend threw called an "inscrutable object party" Everyone was to bring a pot luck food item and one "Inscrutable object" that the rest of us would try to identify/figure out what it was. Most of the objects were tools for obsolete tasks. I had a porcelain rectanglar box that had a porcelain roller set into it - was to be partially filled with water and used to lick stamps or envelope flaps.

Joanne in Cleveland (only partially obsolete)