Top Hat

In his 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll introduced a character called the Mad Hatter. Although Carroll's Mad Hatter was fictional, the strange and unpredictable behavior he displayed was not uncommon among people employed in the felt hat industry in the 1800's. Mercury nitrate was used in the felting process and constant exposure to the chemical eventually caused the hatters to develop mercury poisoning. The connection between mercury poisoning and the hatters' behavior was not understood at the time, but the term "mad as a hatter" was in common usage.
Mercury is no longer used in the felting process and is being phased out of many other industrial uses as well.

The early phongraph

The Columbia Phonograph Company made cylinder records until 1909 when it dropped cylinders in favor of disk records. The Victor Talking Machine Company never sold cylinder records, preferring the disk format. Edison's National Phonograph Company continued making wax cylinders until late 1912 (when they switched from using wax to a celluloid plastic). Edison finally stopped making all entertainment records, both cylinder and disk, in October 1929 - one day before the stock market crash.