The Evolution of Buttons

 

But not the sort that keep your cardigan together.

I had a mild panic attack today when a big orange square appeared on my dashboard as I was driving home from work:

It turns out Radio 2 have changed their logo-image thingy on DAB Radio.

I usually listen to Johnny Vaughan on Radio X or Simon Mayo on Greatest Hits when I'm driving home.  But I switch between them when adverts come on and today they had adverts on at the same time so I happened to switch to Radio 2 and up came that big orange square.

Now for some reason, that got me thinking about warning lights and dashboards.

My first car had the Triumph "All Systems Go" warning light cluster - I loved it.

Never managed to light up all 8 segments at the same time though.

The original dashboards had nothing on them - they were the boards at the front of carts that were pulled by horses - they were meant to protect the driver from mud and other unpleasantries thrown up by the horses hooves when travelling off-road.

The name stuck when the first motor cars appeared - logical given that most looked like "horseless carriages."

Eventually, as cars became cars, the dashboards were used to house instruments and controls for new fangled additions such as windscreen wipers - and, as anyone who subscribes to idriveaclassic on YouTube will know, pull switches were very popular for many years right up to the 1960s:

...and beyond for things like the hazard warning lights on my Triumph.

These were eventually replaced by toggle switches:

Then it was the turn of my favourite - the rocker switch!

These prevailed in the 1970s when I was becoming fascinated by cars.  You could could buy them in Halfords and Motorworld to add accessories (usually fog lamps) to your Vauxhall Victor or Ford Escort.

By the '90s - buttons had taken over:

In quite a big way in some cars - My Jaguar X-Type had buttons to operate a phone I didn't have.

I like buttons - not as much as I like rocker switches - but they are tactile and necessary when you need to control lots of things like heated seats and electric windows and climate control.

But, as even more complicated things (like Apps!) are becoming part of motoring, touchscreens are taking over from buttons.  VW famously took them too far and had to reinstate some - it was getting dangerous having to look away from the road to do basic things like put the air on re-circ.

I sometime use the voice commands on my car but I have found myself arguing with it a few times too and voice control is also no use to people with Scottish accents.

My car has a mixture of real buttons and touchscreen which is about as far from the horse and cart dashboard as you can get.

Imagine having to put up with a boring dashboard.