Pre-Internet technologies

Public Telephone Booths

When was the last time you used a public telephone booth? But when did you last see one? For me, it must have been around first grade (2009). Back then, I did not have my own phone yet and my mother had asked me to call her whenever I got to school, since the route there was rather long. I also remember having a phone card. I only got my own phone in second grade, when most payphones had been already taken down.

William Gray was the designer of the first phone booth, created in 1889. It might have looked something like this:

The first telephone booth; https://thebronxchronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1st-pay-phone-booth.jpg

To be fair, it looks very luxurious and fit for a bank, where it was located. Since then, house phones have become more and more common. In addition, most people now have their own personal phones which can easily fit in a pocket. And, most people do not even carry physical money with them. 

All of this means, in short, that no-one has probably seen a usable payphone in Tallinn for over 10 years. 

Computer Monitors

Karl Ferdinand Braun was the one to create the first computer monitor in 1897. It used a cathode ray tube to emit light when electrons stroke it. The monitor was used to display colorless vector graphs. Later, the color cathode ray was implemented which allowed to display graphics and texts in color. These monitors were very bulky and emitted a lot of heat. Even worse, the display was not very bright so it could not be used in daylight, for example.

This was followed by the discovery of LED-monitors in 1962, LCD-monitors in 1968 and OLED-monitors in 1987. And still, most people use monitors in their everyday lives.

Sources:

Public Telephone Booths:

1) https://www.five9.com/rise-and-fall-of-the-telephone-booth

Computer Monitors:

1) https://www.vssmonitoring.com/who-invented-the-first-computer-monitor/