What do you think?
Rate this book
Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects
Blending architecture, design, and technology, a visual tour through futures past via the objects we have replaced, left behind, and forgotten.
So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simply forgotten. Extinct gathers together an exceptional range of artists, curators, architects, critics, and academics, including Hal Foster, Barry Bergdoll, Deyan Sudjic, Tacita Dean, Emily Orr, Richard Wentworth, and many more. In eighty-five essays, contributors nominate “extinct” objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world. Extinct is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never came to pass. It is also a visual treat, full of interest and delight.
So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simply forgotten. Extinct gathers together an exceptional range of artists, curators, architects, critics, and academics, including Hal Foster, Barry Bergdoll, Deyan Sudjic, Tacita Dean, Emily Orr, Richard Wentworth, and many more. In eighty-five essays, contributors nominate “extinct” objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world. Extinct is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never came to pass. It is also a visual treat, full of interest and delight.
390 pages, Hardcover
First published December 21, 2021
13 people are currently reading
641 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Penner
13 books2 followersBarbara Penner is Senior Lecturer in Architectural History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She is author of Bathroom (Reaktion, 2014 - short-listed for the RIBA President's Awards for Outstanding University-Located Research), Newlyweds on Tour: Honeymooning in Nineteenth-Century America (UPNE, 2009), and is co-editor of Gender Space Architecture (Routledge, 2000).
Barbara regularly lectures in institutions across the UK, Japan, and North America. She is a regular columnist for architectural magazines like Places and Architectural Review. She serves as a member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Architecture (2011-) and Interiors: Architecture, Design, Culture (2009-) and is a Board Member of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.
Barbara regularly lectures in institutions across the UK, Japan, and North America. She is a regular columnist for architectural magazines like Places and Architectural Review. She serves as a member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Architecture (2011-) and Interiors: Architecture, Design, Culture (2009-) and is a Board Member of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Read
July 2, 2025Excellent concept, but less than stellar execution. Some essays seemed like nerds flexing their esoteric knowledge a little too inaccessibly for the layman--such as myself. Many essays seemed too tangential to really deliver any important knowledge about the objects, etc. But some excellent little essays as well!
March 10, 2025
I have to round up to 5 stars because I think the concept here is so excellent.
The introduction frames things nicely, from the jump making a very good point about the term 'extinction', which draws on the language of evolution. Of course, evolution does not always eradicate what is lesser and keep what is greater. Things that make sense in context survive - and in this case the context is cultural, which can mean prioritising growth, capital, aesthetic, etc. over function, or joy, or safety, or any other value. To borrow the same quote as the editors do on p. 11, Lewis Mumford says "the function of evolutionary theory in industrial society was not to explain technical change, but to normalize the inequities produced by capitalism."
That said, many of the inventions featured here have disappeared for reasons less than nefarious. Some seem like sad losses for sure, some have had obviously superior replacements, some stuck out because their stories are just plain funny!
My favourite essays:
- Atmospheric Railway: In Ireland; featuring the story of an engineering student who accidentally released the brakes on a detached carriage and was carried from Kingstown to Dalkey (some 10 to 15km away) in 75 seconds (!), not terribly far off from a modern airplane
- Chatelaines: Wow the fashion possibilities! Loved the comparison to a carabiner
- Close-constraint Key: A very cool analog solution to a forever problem
- Convaircar: This thing goes crazy lol. I love being reminded that this sort of tech was possible AGES ago, but it turns out there were reasons not to keep going down that particular path
- Invacar: Another automobile innovation, this time with some pretty radical disability-related ambitions!
- Optical Telegraph: Another super clever and fundamentally analog design. Loved the contrast of its "combination of secretiveness with shameless self-display"
- Pneumatic Postal System: This gets a shout-out for remaining alive and well at the hospital
- Polaroid SX-70: This essay makes a very interesting point about the Polaroid bringing photography out from under the inherent scrutiny of at least one other person for all but those who ran their own dark rooms. What a fundamental shift for art, for personal documentary
- Public Standards of Length: I found this rather sweet and endearing. We're really trying, human beings. Also reminded me of this very good Radiolab episode
- Scaphander: Probably the funniest essay in the book. The description of poor La Chapelle pitching his invention to King Louis XV -- "the drawback that the scaphander could be propelled only by a kind of pedalo action of treading water was made painfully clear when the strong current swirled La Chapelle away from view so swiftly that the king was unable to make out anything of his display." It's giving one of my favourite pieces of media
The introduction frames things nicely, from the jump making a very good point about the term 'extinction', which draws on the language of evolution. Of course, evolution does not always eradicate what is lesser and keep what is greater. Things that make sense in context survive - and in this case the context is cultural, which can mean prioritising growth, capital, aesthetic, etc. over function, or joy, or safety, or any other value. To borrow the same quote as the editors do on p. 11, Lewis Mumford says "the function of evolutionary theory in industrial society was not to explain technical change, but to normalize the inequities produced by capitalism."
That said, many of the inventions featured here have disappeared for reasons less than nefarious. Some seem like sad losses for sure, some have had obviously superior replacements, some stuck out because their stories are just plain funny!
My favourite essays:
- Atmospheric Railway: In Ireland; featuring the story of an engineering student who accidentally released the brakes on a detached carriage and was carried from Kingstown to Dalkey (some 10 to 15km away) in 75 seconds (!), not terribly far off from a modern airplane
- Chatelaines: Wow the fashion possibilities! Loved the comparison to a carabiner
- Close-constraint Key: A very cool analog solution to a forever problem
- Convaircar: This thing goes crazy lol. I love being reminded that this sort of tech was possible AGES ago, but it turns out there were reasons not to keep going down that particular path
- Invacar: Another automobile innovation, this time with some pretty radical disability-related ambitions!
- Optical Telegraph: Another super clever and fundamentally analog design. Loved the contrast of its "combination of secretiveness with shameless self-display"
- Pneumatic Postal System: This gets a shout-out for remaining alive and well at the hospital
- Polaroid SX-70: This essay makes a very interesting point about the Polaroid bringing photography out from under the inherent scrutiny of at least one other person for all but those who ran their own dark rooms. What a fundamental shift for art, for personal documentary
- Public Standards of Length: I found this rather sweet and endearing. We're really trying, human beings. Also reminded me of this very good Radiolab episode
- Scaphander: Probably the funniest essay in the book. The description of poor La Chapelle pitching his invention to King Louis XV -- "the drawback that the scaphander could be propelled only by a kind of pedalo action of treading water was made painfully clear when the strong current swirled La Chapelle away from view so swiftly that the king was unable to make out anything of his display." It's giving one of my favourite pieces of media
December 25, 2024
3 stars
The concept of this book is really cool, with short vignettes of objects which are now rendered obsolete for various reasons. I think this actually would have done much better as a museum exhibit rather than a book but do see the value in compiling these objects like this.
The good and bad of this book tend to stem from the same thing, which is that there are 85 short vignettes. This means that there were a lot of objects I thought were really interesting and wanted to read more about but there were also many objects which I really didn't care about (I learned I don't care about planes). Because there were so many objects, there's something for everyone but you also have to get through the stuff that's not for you. There was a good variety of objects such as fun things that didn't take off, things rendered obsolete by different technology, or things that failed for circumstances outside of their control.
Another issue that came up was that the segments are all written by different people. Though I think the editors did a great job at keeping them all somewhat uniform, there are a couple in which the writing style dramatically changes and it's quite jarring. All in all it was a fun concept and a fun read in the chapters you're interested in but it's quite long to read all the way through when you don't have interest in a good 30% of the objects.
The concept of this book is really cool, with short vignettes of objects which are now rendered obsolete for various reasons. I think this actually would have done much better as a museum exhibit rather than a book but do see the value in compiling these objects like this.
The good and bad of this book tend to stem from the same thing, which is that there are 85 short vignettes. This means that there were a lot of objects I thought were really interesting and wanted to read more about but there were also many objects which I really didn't care about (I learned I don't care about planes). Because there were so many objects, there's something for everyone but you also have to get through the stuff that's not for you. There was a good variety of objects such as fun things that didn't take off, things rendered obsolete by different technology, or things that failed for circumstances outside of their control.
Another issue that came up was that the segments are all written by different people. Though I think the editors did a great job at keeping them all somewhat uniform, there are a couple in which the writing style dramatically changes and it's quite jarring. All in all it was a fun concept and a fun read in the chapters you're interested in but it's quite long to read all the way through when you don't have interest in a good 30% of the objects.
June 17, 2024
Como antología de retazos retrofuturistas, este libro resulta más curioso que nostálgico y, sin duda, entretenido. Junto a cosas que llegué a conocer y tenía curiosidad de saber por qué fueron descontinuadas o tuvieron una vida tan efímera, encontré proyectos de los que nunca había oído, proyectos bastante alocados que, sin embargo, no parecían mala idea. Y otros que, pese a ser claros desatinos desde su concepción, fueron puestos en marcha con el mayor entusiasmo. Tampoco faltan los mortinatos, esos que no llegaron a arrancar. Pero más que una historia de intentos fallidos o fracasos disimulados, veo el compendio como una exploración de la capacidad de adaptación que tienen ciertas ideas y esperanzas traducidas en términos materiales.
Lo extinto es una excedencia del tiempo, lo que acaba sobrando por no encajar en los constantes reacomodos del mundo y de las formas de entenderlo. Cada caso recogido en este libro -la selección parece un tanto arbitraria, pero funciona bien como muestrario- constituye un punto de combustión espontánea de la idea de progreso y del contradictorio afán de simplificar la vida a través de una sofisticación que acaba por no ser sostenible en el tiempo, por quedarse corta en su ejercicio de imaginar el mañana o porque el mercado no le tuvo fe.
Lo extinto es una excedencia del tiempo, lo que acaba sobrando por no encajar en los constantes reacomodos del mundo y de las formas de entenderlo. Cada caso recogido en este libro -la selección parece un tanto arbitraria, pero funciona bien como muestrario- constituye un punto de combustión espontánea de la idea de progreso y del contradictorio afán de simplificar la vida a través de una sofisticación que acaba por no ser sostenible en el tiempo, por quedarse corta en su ejercicio de imaginar el mañana o porque el mercado no le tuvo fe.
December 15, 2024
A delightful art project of 85 short essays on objects that have fallen out of use, or inventions that never really even got off the ground. They are records of life in a past world, necessities, dreams, covering everything from architecture to fashion to travel and printing processes. It's a love letter to the vanishing physical world, that is uneven but invaluable.
The book starts with a bang on the Acoustic Listening Device, a precursor to radar that was just a guy sitting in the English countryside with a giant hearing trumpet trying to figure out where he heard zeppelins. They soon figured out blind people were the best at this, and there are still big concrete dishes lying in the grass in the UK, the leftovers of acoustic mirrors.
Other great recalls are the chatelaine, an ornate 19th century jangly key ring because fashionable pockets weren't accessible, the moon tower which used the super bright arc lamp to light whole blocks before the being defeated by incandescent bulbs and the shadows of trees and buildings. The French somehow had a lot of awesome things: minitel, an early internet precursor, a phone directly connected to the national opera, Paris's pneumatic postal system. There's a lovely essay on the lost colours in the Kodachrome film development process, dismantled in the digital camera boom and still unable to be replicated.
These hits more than make up for the misses: some yawning essays on failed instant home designs and Buckminster Fuller's dumb contraptions, some cringey Elon Musk adulation, an essay on the player piano more about literature than the object itself. The inventive essays that stretch objects (Zambia's Cyclops 1 revolutionary-art-project-cum-space-program, Punch magazine's satirical Edison levitating undergarments) inject some fun into some of the self-serious engineer posting.
If you want the sensation of going deep into a Wikipedia click hole in book form, highly recommend this book. The thick pages, beautiful images and sheer sense of delight in human invention will keep you grinning.
http://lawrencedebbs.home.blog/2024/1...
The book starts with a bang on the Acoustic Listening Device, a precursor to radar that was just a guy sitting in the English countryside with a giant hearing trumpet trying to figure out where he heard zeppelins. They soon figured out blind people were the best at this, and there are still big concrete dishes lying in the grass in the UK, the leftovers of acoustic mirrors.
Other great recalls are the chatelaine, an ornate 19th century jangly key ring because fashionable pockets weren't accessible, the moon tower which used the super bright arc lamp to light whole blocks before the being defeated by incandescent bulbs and the shadows of trees and buildings. The French somehow had a lot of awesome things: minitel, an early internet precursor, a phone directly connected to the national opera, Paris's pneumatic postal system. There's a lovely essay on the lost colours in the Kodachrome film development process, dismantled in the digital camera boom and still unable to be replicated.
These hits more than make up for the misses: some yawning essays on failed instant home designs and Buckminster Fuller's dumb contraptions, some cringey Elon Musk adulation, an essay on the player piano more about literature than the object itself. The inventive essays that stretch objects (Zambia's Cyclops 1 revolutionary-art-project-cum-space-program, Punch magazine's satirical Edison levitating undergarments) inject some fun into some of the self-serious engineer posting.
If you want the sensation of going deep into a Wikipedia click hole in book form, highly recommend this book. The thick pages, beautiful images and sheer sense of delight in human invention will keep you grinning.
http://lawrencedebbs.home.blog/2024/1...
April 25, 2022
A beautiful project. Philosophical for examining extinct things. And it points out - I guess for most readers - obsoletes I didn't know ever existed, were popular, or at least promising.
I did expect to see a financial object. Money safes; extinct ways to make/save money, to buy/sell stuff, borrow/lend money... there must be a few obsoletes.
Good to see the great Amartya Sen quoted right upfront.
I did expect to see a financial object. Money safes; extinct ways to make/save money, to buy/sell stuff, borrow/lend money... there must be a few obsoletes.
Good to see the great Amartya Sen quoted right upfront.
May 20, 2022
Fascinating bunch of vignettes about obsolete objects. Classified by how they met their demise (the teletype has been replaced by newer tech, while the plastic bag is being legislated out for environmental reasons, while an electric car/tricycle called the Sinclair C5 was a failure), it’s a great walk through history.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews