Electromechanical stuff. Like old jukeboxes, pinball machines or anything else that required programming before the widespread use of microcontrollers.

Some people have already mentioned stuff akin to this, like the mechanical govenor, or the post abt THIS MUSEUM IS NOT OBSOLETE, but it really deserves its own thread.

Technology Connections on YouTube has made some great videos about devices like that.

Pinball Jukebox

The technology behind telecommunication.

Today everything happens inside your router, fast and silent. My father was a telecommunications engineer. When I was a amall boy (late 1980s) he once took me to his workplace (it was in the evening and he was supposed to troubleshoot). What today fits onto a few silicone chips inside a router took much more space back them.

I was in a room that was filled with several wardsobe-sized cabinets. Inside there were hundreds of electro-mechanical relays that were in motion, spinning and clicking, each time someone in the city dialed a number (back then rotary phones were quite common). It was quite loud. There also was a phone receptor inside one of the cabinets where one could tap into an established connection, listening into the conversation two strage people had (it was for checking if a connectiion works).

I still remeber the distinct "electrical" smell of that room (probably hazardous vapors from long forbidden cable insulation and other electrical components).

So when you dialed a number at one place with your rotary phone, you were able to move some electro-mechanical parts at another place that could be located somewhere else around the globe (hence long distance calls).

Neither sure how to call it, nor is it a technology, more like a mindset. I am just gonna name it: "Prideful Craftsmanship"

Basically the incorporation of "useless" decorations and embellishments, to show off ones skill and maybe market oneself a little. Definitely superseded in the capitalist world. Things were just prettier or more interesting to look at, even stuff that wasn't meant to be flashy.

But with nearly everything being made to a price point, this practice has been somewhat lost.

Clothing and towels made with asbestos fabric. During the middle ages you could clean them by throwing them in the fire and they would come out clean. Eventually your lungs would give up on you but for a while you had a very cool way to impress your guests.

Video game consoles.

Automatic watches and grandfather clocks. The way they kept track of time using only mechanical principles is crazy. How does my automatic watch recharge itself using only the movement from wearing it and keep accurate track of time. Grandfather clocks are cool because they're so power efficient.

Phones. From anytime up to and including rotary phones.

CDs and DVDs, because ownership beats convenience when you can get them second hand for pennies on the pound

Bicycle shifters.

The first iteration that could be operated without stopping was the Campagnolo Cambio Corsa.
To shift, you had to reach behind you, where there were 2 levers.

The first one loosened the rear axle so it could move freely back and forth in the dropouts.
The second one had an eyelet you could use to move the chain sideways.
You put the chain on a different cog, and the rear wheel jumped forward or back due to the changed chain length.
Then you tightened the rear axle again.

It's terrifyingly beautiful:

I'm going back to video games that had multiplayer before we had network connectivity. If I wanted to play against a friend, we would have to get together in person and hang out. Game was done, you had a friend over for dinner. Or just a friend to come over and help you with the game. I miss when games were actual social events.

Any mechanical regulation process that used to be handled by actual machine parts. Think of the centrifugal governor, this beautiful and elegant mechanical device just for regulating the speed of a steam engine. Sure, a computer chip could do it a lot better today, and we're not even building steam engines quite like those anymore. But still, mechanically controlled things are just genuinely a lot cooler.

Or hell, even for computing, take a look at the elaborate mechanical computers that were used to calculate firing solutions on old battleships. Again, silicon computers perform objectively better in nearly every way, but there's something objectively cool about solving an set of equations on an elaborate arrangement of clockwork.

I've got another one: Airplanes.

There used to be crazy designs and a lot of variation between planes. Tandem seats, swing wings, dual tailplanes, gull wings, all sorts of crazy design choices side by side. Even commercial airplanes had lots of variation. Trijets with tail stairs, engines embedded in the wing roots.

Planes now all sort of look the same. Every fifth generation fighter looks the same. Granted, this is because they're hitting physical constraints of aerodynamics and stealth, but that limits the creativity of the designers.

A lot of older tech had a way more interesting silhouette. You can see this clearly in how many objects live on in icon form. We still often use handset phones, magnifying glasses, gears, or the infamous floppy disk save icon. I think the staying power of these really comes from how ephemeral and formless digital tech can be.

A nixie tube is a bunch of tiny lightbulbs shaped into numbers in a single pack with different pins each turning on a number.

Clearly the modern number display is better in many ways, but you were asking for coolness.

Lighthouses.

Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated, and more effective electronic navigational systems.

They were quite important for a long time. We used them for thousands of years, and they're often unique in form, iconic. And they're a good subject for photos and paintings, and I think that the light effect from them is neat. Lots of books and such using them, like ones on remote rocks, to get an isolated setting ("the lone lighthouse keeper").

But the past few decades of technological advancement have probably closed the end of their era.

I remember getting a hand-me-down digital 'black book' to store phone numbers during the age of the palm pilot. It had a 'dial' button and a speaker on the back. You could pick up the phone, put the speaker against the phone's mouthpiece and it would 'dial' by playing the correct tones. Blew. My. Mind.

I love that about CRTs, man.

How the fuck could we invent a tiny pocket sized particle accelerator electron beam gun that magnetically aimed its fire with such precision as to hit every individual phosphor, with the appropriate charge to make the right color, across an entire fucking screen, and do that 30+ times a second (for TV, or 60+ for a monitor)..

Yet the LCD is the high tech fancy monitor when its just a little grid of globs being electronically fired? How did the CRT get invented before the LCD?!

These huge mechanical clocks in church towers.