Adjust · How much? · it follows
Element 5
Set how much, smoothly.
knob · slider · wheel · crown
First known
From a history
1949Whirlwind's Bouncing Ball: turn the frequency knobs to make the ball fall through a hole. Charlie Adams, MIT.
See also: Tennis for Two's angle knob, 1958.
Norman Taylor's account at a 1989 SIGGRAPH panel; no 1949 document opened.
Dated by a reputable history or a participant's own account. The source.
- ReadingValue
Specimen № 5a — operate freely
Grab the dial and twist. Toggle the teeth.
Fig. 5a — Rotate
000 readings · idle
Anatomy of Rotate
- 01Grab
- You
- Takes hold of the dial.
- It
- Measures the angle from the center.
- 02Turn
- You
- Twists.
- It
- Follows the wrist, a degree for a degree.
- 03Detent
- You
- Nears a 15° mark, with teeth on.
- It
- Takes the last few degrees for itself.
- 04Let go
- You
- Releases.
- It
- Leaves it there, or on the nearest tooth.
Phases light as the specimen above registers them. The dark ones are the ones it can't sense.
Lineage
Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad rotated drawings by turning a knob in 1963. Multi-touch brought rotation back to the hand, as a second reading of the same two fingers that pinch.
Under delegation
Survives
- Survives
- Mutates
- Dissolves
A dial is a continuous value under one hand, with teeth if you want them. Model settings are values nobody has given a dial: how much to change, how close to stay. The detent is the interesting part. It's where the system's opinion begins, and that should be felt, not hidden.
Down the Adjust column
Read down and Dial gets heavier: each step is the same act, on a machine that keeps track of more.
Bodies
The act stays put while the hardware changes. These are some of the forms Dial takes.
- knob
- slider
- wheel
- crown
From the 2021 table
These were tiles of their own. On this table each is a form of Dial, and each old address lands here.