The Ottoman Empire.
Just within the window. Ottoman empire ended in 1922-1923. Started 1299. I think this is the current winner.
horse and buggy for local transportation? Not sure when that was totally replaced by the auto. I'm assuming it was a gradual thing.
Good suggestion. I'm going to claim it's still used by the Amish. Finding things that are actually dead is hard but I promise you they exist.
Is this because of WaWhites post? Are you both conspiring against me?
My grandfather used to deliver ice in New York City.
Residential ice delivery is still a thing, https://sodayoda.com/residential-ice-delivery/
I know you didn't mention residential but I was trying to narrow it down to give it a better chance of being dead.
You are correct. I was specifically referring to the old days of "ice boxes" to keep food cold. You'd get a huge block delivered every day or so.
You know you've got me thinking pretty intently. Is the ice box dead? It looks like it is, and within the last 100 years, at least here, but..
Then that begs the next question of when did they start. They could be freaking ancient. Let's say you live in Scandinavia. You have some food in summer or spring you want to keep consistently cold. But mid-day it actually might get pretty warm. It might get up to 50 degrees!! Things could spoil. Fish would be a prime example. But the river or lake still has ice on it. When was the first time someone thought to do this could be the oldest thing on the page so far..
But that begs the question also if anyone is doing that currently in Scandinavia.
Edit:
For some reason I didn't read the wiki on the origin. 1775 BC in Sumeria. So I'm going to give it. No one is using an ice box, with ice being delivered to them, as their main means of food preservation. Anyone in a rural enough place that they are doing that are doing it themselves and not getting it delivered, and anyone delivering it is not delivering it to some one who uses this for every day food preservation. So 1775 BC is definitely the oldest date on here.
Edit: nvmd, that's an ice house. Exact date on ice box I'm still looking. Earliest confirmed date I can get is 1840.
He still does, but also he used to.
Nah, he's been dead for 20 years. Before that he was put out of work by those new-fangled refrigerator thingies.
I hate how long they don't last. I still miss mine all the time.
But we get ice deliveries to the marina. Gotta make sure that the sea does not get too warm! Or the beer.
Using lead based hair dye. Just kidding .
You need to qualify this a bit. Many things that are no longer used in the Western world are still common in the third world. There are also niche markets for everything ... like typewriters, vacuum tubes, steam engines. So there's not much that isn't obsolete that also doesn't have a use either elsewhere or in specialty type roles.
Well we'd have to discuss the item after someone suggests it. Like the steam engine. There's no current applications for it, even in less developed places. Anywhere you can send a steam engine to can also receive a diesel generator/motor.
So I would claim that the steam engine is dead, and dead within the last 100 years. But it is certainly not the oldest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine#Present_development, only documented use today (wikipedia) is in R&D. That's dead if the only application is experimenting with bringing it back to life.
Typewriters are still in use. Vacuum tubes are very much in use (microwaves and xrays). The vacuum transistor more specifically is also in use. It has higher frequency switching needed for some hi-band microwave-radio applications.
So I would say the current winner of the thread is the steam engine. But can someone do better. I promise you there are older things.
Also for a date I'm going to go with it's first commercial use, 1698. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine#Pumping_engines. It looks like it's not as old as the Ottoman empire though.
Okay I’m sorry for being that guy, but isn’t a nuclear power plant technically a steam engine? It uses heat to make steam to turn a turbine. Or at least that’s my understand of how they work.
Ok. Steam piston engine.
contraceptives
Party telephone lines I don’t think are a thing anymore.
Properly dead as of 2002. Started in the late 1800s. I'm still surprised no one has beaten the ottoman empire.
Ottoman Empire is pretty tough to beat, that was around a long time and recently went away in historical terms.
Many diseases have a cure or vaccination now.
This is a good one. Have any specifics? I know some diseases have a start. Name a disease and I'll try looking for it.
I'm not claiming to have medical knowledge here. But is curable now.
Typhus is still a thing. .
It like the black plague was first observed as a middle ages disease that was a product of war. Maybe it could have existed before then. Really no conclusion, but we are going to put that at 1489. But typhus is definitely still a thing.
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