History of the Button

Sign in Subscribe

Bill DeRouchey

Pinball Hall of Fame, Las Vegas

When I was in Las Vegas for CES, I visited the Pinball Hall of Fame. Yes, of all the museums in Vegas, I went for the pinball. Located in a strip mall about three miles east of The Strip, the Pinball Hall of Fame was opened on February 3, 2006

iPhone: Future of the Button

Tuesday was an eventful day for the history of the button. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to four thousand cheering fans at Macworld San Francisco. Wow. You probably know the story by now. Phone, iPod, photos, email, web, etc. But the biggest story is the touchscreen technology. On the front,

Six months of History of the Button

The holiday season coincides with the six month semi-anniversary of the History of the Button. Sounds like a good time for a little reflection, and a little break. A lot of new readers have been here recently (welcome!), so I’d like to step back a moment to reflect on

1950: Pushbutton manor

Dan just pointed me to this amazing Popular Mechanics article from 1950 about a man who automated his home with pushbuttons. And Modern Mechanix scanned and published the whole article. Awesome job.

The oven vs the microwave

Either our oven is wrong or our microwave is wrong. They can’t both be right. Why can’t they just get along? Pushing their identical-looking buttons produces exactly opposite results. We moved last year into a new (to us) home. The kitchen had been remodeled a couple of years

1956: Chrysler pushbutton driving

In 1956, Chrysler introduced two flavors of pushbutton driving, the TorqueFlite and PowerFlite transmissions. The time was perfect. The future was here. Cars grew fins. Sputnik was a year away. Automation was still the key to a world of leisure. Cooking and cleaning were getting automated, why not driving? Here’

1979: Pulsar calculator watch

Sometimes buttons go a little too far. They get overly confident of how they can improve our lives. They try to help, really. They just don’t know any better. For example, calculator watches. It seemed like a really good idea at the time. The electronic guts required to run

1963: Pushbutton telephone

The telephone is a classic example of when technology evolves, it often introduces pushbuttons to replace the older, more primitive interface. Telephones had used rotary dials since 1891 when Almon Strowger patented the twin inventions of the automatic telephone exchange and the pulse-driven telephone in the home. The legend is

Hello Ireland

Life is funny. I was just interviewed by Sean Moncrieff on Newstalk from Ireland (newstalk.ie) to talk about the history of the button. 2:45 in the afternoon there, 6:45 in the morning here. Nice guy, it was a fun show. If you’re coming here after listening

1950: Pushbutton cooking

The 1950s began to deliver the leisure that the 1930s promised. Modern conveniences appeared at work and at home, and most significantly, in the kitchen. And the majority of these conveniences were targeted at women. As you’ll see over time, one of the areas I find really fascinating in