What Happened to the W Sound?

Some words lost their W sound in middle English, while some lost it in early modern English. Think about the word answer: It's spelled A-N-S-W-E-R, but we don't pronounce the W. In that environment, the W sound tended to disappear. Another example of this process is the word conquer; if we were to pronounce that word like it's spelled, we would probably say conquer.