The Dustbin of History

Last year Japanese production of the Sony Walkman bit the dust (you can still get one in China), earlier this year car tape player faded to black, and now the typewriter (which oddly I used to push for IBM for a very brief period in college) gets tossed into the dustbin of history.

From Slashgear...

Handkerchiefs at the ready, people, it’s a sad day. Sony has announced that it is ceasing Japanese sales and production of the cassette Walkman, around 30 years after it first started selling them. The Sony Walkman TPS-L2 went on sale in Japan on July 1 1979, and while the models have obviously changed since then, Sony only shipped its last batch to retailers in April 2010.

From the NYT...

For all of you who were planning to pack up your oldies tapes and go shopping for a 2011 car, there is bad news: you’re too late. According to experts who monitor the automotive market, the last new car to be factory-equipped with a cassette deck in the dashboard was a 2010 Lexus.

From the Business Standard...

“[Godrej] stopped production in 2009 and were the last company in the world to manufacture office typewriters. Currently, the company has only 500 machines left."

“From the early 2000 onwards, computers started dominating. All the manufacturers of office typewriters stopped production, except us. Till 2009, we used to produce 10,000 to 12,000 machines a year,” said Dukle.

I wonder what's next.