Ask Lemmy

Dildoes and pocket pussies

Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.

Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.

Fax machines will never die no matter how they are mocked. It simply is the easiest way to send documents with private information and it's fast. At least we have e-faxing now to receive documents.

Steam engines.

The vast majority of our power comes from making something really hot and boiling water. Coal plant? Oil plant? Gas plant? Nuclear fission plant? Geothermal plant? The grand holy grail of energy production that would be a nuclear fusion plant? All steam engines.

Yes, unbeknownst to everyone, this is what a steampunk society realistically looks like.

Pager and satellite phone. Mostly a niche usecase for health workers and remote location settlement respectively.

Pagers.

Still in use by hospitals and emergency services

fax machines, both in Germany and Japan.

The IRS still use COBOL.

IPv4.

IPv6 became a recognized standard by 1998.

EDIT: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption

Nearly 30 years later, and less than half of the connections to Google are via IPv6.

Microsoft Windows

I'm surprised nobody mentioned jack plugs yet. Basically unchanged since 1877 when it was invented for phone switchboards, roughly as old as safety pins or modern hairpins (give or take a few decades)

Fax, still in official use in Germany.

General Aviation is still using magnetos. The typical GA airplane is hilariously primitive.

It surprises me how many system utilities I use that are older than I am. I am currently initializing a disk on a cloud server with an application that was written when Ford was the US president.

The Wheel. We should've graduated to antigravity by now, don't you think?

There's a used bookstore near me that has the oldest cash register I've ever seen. It has keys like a typewriter, and makes the most satisfying "ka-ching" sound when it opens. They always use it to add up your purchase and print a receipt, even when you're paying with a credit card. But I always try to bring cash when I'm there so that the drawer gets used. (And also, y'know, screw credit card companies taking their cut.)

I know that's not really "in widespread use" today, which is probably what the question meant, but that was the first thing that came to mind for me.

Car thermostats for the radiator. You don't want the coolant flowing when the engine first starts, because it will run like shit. So you have a cylinder filled with wax that expands with heat. That controls a valve to set the flow of coolant. Low tech, works fine, no particular reason to change it.