Historically, vector data was used a lot.
Pen plotters used pens to draw on paper (an early form of graphics printer)
These were cheap and produced line-based drawings.
Storage of high-volume bitmap files was expensive!
With the advent of cheap storage, and high-resolution output, now most images are bitmap-based.
Bitmaps are everywhere!
– Just look at the WWW, with GIFs, JPEGs everywhere!