Monday, May 25, 2009

Reinventing The Knob


You know what I miss?
Well, I miss a lot of things, the main one being my brain and also my ability to spell any word with more than one vowel in it but that's not what I came here to talk about.
What I came here to talk about today is the dial. Yes. The dial. And the knob. The beautiful knob.
A very plain, short word for a very simple small thing which worked like a charm.

You see that radio up there?
Believe it or not, I used to have one which looked a lot like it. I was maybe twelve, and I was given this radio because my family had gotten a more modern radio. A plastic one. I think it might even have been a clock-radio, which was high tech, baby. It probably looked something like this:

But what do you notice about that thing besides the fact that it's beige and very, very ugly?
It has dials and knobs. Yep. Right there.
Anyway, I used to lie on my bed and turn on that old wooden-cased radio and it took a while for it to start up because it actually ran on tubes but that was okay. I would turn the dial because there were two radio stations in town (AM of course) that played rock music and I could choose between them, depending on which one was coming in better that day. I would listen to the Rolling Stones playing Ruby Tuesday or the Beach Boys doing Little Surfer Girl or London Swings Like A Pendulum Do by Roger Miller or Don't Sleep On The Subway Darling by Petula Clark or As Time Goes By by Marianne Faithful or Eight Days A Week by the Beatles or Sunshine Superman by Donovan and all that lovely, groovy music would beam straight from that old box of tubes through the air and into my ears.
It was strange and wonderful and I loved that radio. I loved that music. I loved the way when I turned the knob to change the station the dial was connected directly to it and the long needle would point to the numbers and I could zone in to the correct place with that bakelite knob and there would be the Beatles singing to me, the Beach Boys crooning to me, Donovan getting down and getting funky talking about Mellow Yellow.

To adjust the volume I turned another knob up or down.
Oh, it was beautiful. It was elegant.

Now when I want to change the station on a radio I have to punch the fucking up or down thingee. It takes forever. It's insulting to the human brain and finger.

And the clock? Do you see this clock?

It was amazing. Every night you wound a little key on the back a few times and you were good to go for another twenty-four hours. The hands glowed in the dark. If the electricity went out, so what? That Baby Ben was still going to tick. And if it lost or gained a few minutes every week, you could just turn the little gold-colored knob on the back and get it right where it was supposed to be. You set the alarm by twisting another little knob until the needle was on the place you needed to get up. Then you pulled the knob out and you were set. When the alarm went off, you pushed it in. Done.

Let's say the electricity goes out these days. Your clock, your LED lit clock with the digital numbers goes out unless you have a battery back-up. Great. Now it's flashing 12! 12! 12! when the electricity comes back on and you, having slept through the power outage, have no idea if it's really 12:24 a.m. or 4:37 a.m. None! And you have to get up and find a watch or your phone and set the correct time by pushing those stupid buttons until you get the hour and the minutes set and since you're half asleep, you go by them six times and when you finally get that right, you have to reset the alarm with the same buttons but while holding down a different button from the set-time button and THEN, THEN, either the electricity goes back out or else in your dim and drowsy state you've set it at the correct time but for p.m. instead of a.m. and guess what?
You're late for work.
I fucking HATE those buttons.
Give me knobs! Give me dials!

Same thing with my stove. I love my stove. I do. But the stoves I grew up with had five knobs. Four for the burners, one for the oven. When you wanted to bake, you turned the oven knob until the correct temperature number was showing and that was that.

It looked something like this:

How fucking hard is that?
My new stove, which I do love, has a panel. Here it is:


So when you want to bake, you push the "bake" button, it flashes at 350 degrees, which I suppose is the most commonly used temperature for baking and if you want it to be higher or lower, you have to push those temp/hour buttons up and down. Five degree increments go by as you stand there with your finger on the sensor button. Da-da-da, datidah, etc. And then, because I always feel like THAT'S ENOUGH OF THIS FOOLISHNESS, I walk away and a little thing starts chiming because I did not push START.
Okay.
Why is this better than a dial knob? Explain to me. And explain why I spend half my life setting the time on the coffee maker or the oven or the clock pushing little buttons, dit, dit, dit, dit, and then realizing I've gone too far and have to go all the way around again when if I had some damn knobs and dials, it would take half the time? And if things weren't so damn dependant on electricity which did not used to be- stoves, clocks, PHONES!- I wouldn't have to reset them all the time anyway.
Really. Who time-bakes? Are you going to put a tuna casserole in the oven before you go to work and set it to go off thirty minutes before you get home? No. Because you will die of salmonella if you do. Same with a pot roast.

I DON'T NEED TO SET MY OVEN SIX HOURS AHEAD OF TIME! I just want to turn it on to the correct temperature without having to stand there for five minutes with my finger on a button. I don't want to have to tell the oven that yes, I really do want to bake at this temperature after going through all that rigamorole by pushing the START button. Thank-you!
I want knobs! I want dials! Because those buttons are not making life any easier. They look more modern. They look fancy. The digital numbers are great if you're too lazy or stupid to learn to tell time! But I'm not. I can read a clock face. I can turn a knob so fast it'll make your head swim. I could turn fifteen dials to the correct temperature on fifteen old stoves before you could set the temperature for one new stove. Honestly.

Okay. I'm about done now.

But speaking as someone who has literally cried over the incomplete and incompetent directions on the written-in-Chinese-translated-to-English-by-someone-from-Mongolia booklet that comes with a coffee maker, I'm sick of this shit! I have a college degree! I can operate a computer! I can grow organic vegetables and I can use and ATM machine. Really! I do those things every day!
So why am I brought to my knees by a coffee maker?
Because in trying to make things easier, manufacturers have made things more difficult. There is no reason we are all wasting time pushing buttons to make things go up and down.
Can we start a movement? A bring-back-the-knobs-and-dials movement?
Please?
I admit it- I'm old. And I admit that some technology is GREAT! For instance, it's much easier to place a call using buttons than it was to use the rotary dial on old phones. Although I sort of miss that finger-in-the-correct-hole, traveling to the little hook and the click-click-click when you let it go. That was nice. But really, the buttons are easier.
And televisions would have to have a knob the size of Pluto to fit all the channels on it. But still, I have had to call my daughter in college to ask her how to get the remote off one function and on to another so I could watch a TV show. But look, I grew up with a TV like this:


Two knobs. One for the three channels we got and another for volume. That was it. There might have been another knob to try and control the flipping thing TV's used to do but that never worked anyway. And believe it or not, we had to get up and walk across the room to use these knobs! Of course, the screen was less than fifty-seven feet wide so we all sat within arm's length of it anyway so that wasn't a big deal.
Plus, we never lost the remote.

I really am done now with this rant.
But could we? Could we try and talk some sense into the designers of our sweet technological little machines? The ones we use every day? Could we bring back the knobs? Bring back the dials?

Oh. Wait a minute. I have an iPod. And it has...a dial. No pushing buttons to go up and down through a menu. A simple, lovely, elegant dial that you twirl around to get to where you want to go. And then you push the play button and next thing you know...
Ruby Tuesday. Sunshine Superman. Thunder Road. Wide Open Spaces. Lay Lady Lay.
Like that. Just turn the dial. Oh sure, they call it a wheel.
A wheel. They reinvented the wheel, those crazy, clever Apple people.
It's a start.
Do they make an iPod in wood? With tubes?
I'd buy it.

13 comments:

  1. I have an annoying knob in my car. It's the volume for the radio/CD. If I put in a CD while the radio is playing, the volume automatically goes to zero and then I have to wait for the CD player to read it before the knob works again. Until the reading is complete, I can spin the knob with nothing happening. The annoying digital readout that shows what the volume level is, stays at zero. With the exception of this particularly bitchy knob, though I agree. I especially like a knob if I can feel the increments clicking when I turn it.

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  2. I share your love of knobs and hatred of buttons. I'm all for the knob revival. I even have a tent we can use.

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  3. Windy Days- You SEE? These people who design these things are complete idiots. And because of that fact, they make us feel like idiots. Angry, pissed off idiots trying to use their idiotic devices.

    Ms. Trouble- Yes. We can all live in tents and listen to iPods, our click wheels clicking away.

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  4. Yep. I'm completely with you on this one. There is definitely a speed factor and also a sense of satisfaction when tuning in to a station that is fuzzy and you get the tactile satisfaction of working the dial till you get it in JUST right! It was a sort of high for me really. Now when you are stuck between two stations digitally, you are just screwed, there is no way to control the needle.

    I also miss analog sound and TV. I love the old NON digital cartoons. I also love the look and feel of live TV... not to mention the surprises and spontaneity! (Groucho Marx was a master of improv comedy)

    Don't even get me going on the appliances thing. Or the clock thing. I ran into an old friend who teaches middle school and he said he was frightened by how many MIDDLE SCHOOLERS CANNOT TELL TIME unless it is digital. I don't know, it's all kind of insane.

    I am too much of a conspiracy theorist to be comfortable with all this digital. It is way to easily controlled by whomever is putting it out. It is much easier to slip subliminal messages both audio and visual into a digital broadcast than it is the old fashioned analog variety... but that's a whole other post.

    Yes, bring back the dials and knobs! Live TV! Analog! Real boobs and lips! And and and...!

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  5. Ha, in wood with tubes, lovely ending.

    But is all this hatred of buttons and yearning for knobs some badly disguised penis envy!?

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  6. Petit Fleur- I'll go with you to the real boobs and lips thing. Not sure about the subliminal messages.

    DTG- You're so silly.

    Ms. Jo- Please! You are talking to a woman who is obsessed with baskets, bowls and bags. No. I promise you. I have never wanted a penis. Well, except for a few times when it would have made peeing so much easier.

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  7. Well, you certainly made up for your nearly wordless post-birthday post. :D

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  8. I know what you mean. Knobs do make a lot more sense for some things. The stove is a perfect example. Because mine is ancient it still has them, and I have suffered brain-lock when trying to operate the modern, fancy type stoves.

    You have an Ipod? What kind is it? Do you use it often? I ask because I just bought my mom her first one for Mother's Day (a green nano - like the picture you posted). She hasn't quite got the hang of it yet. Any tips?

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  9. Steph- I know. But I actually wrote the knob post last night.

    Lady Lemon- I do use my iPod but not SO much. Mr. Moon and I like to use it to bring our music with us on trips although at the moment we are not driving a car with one of those thingees you can hook it to. And mostly I like to listen to books on tape when I walk and do housework and garden so I'm usually to be found with an antique Walkman around my neck but I think the iPod is pretty easy. I know it'll do a lot more than I know how to do with it, but it does fine for what I want it for. And what kind is it? Shit. Not a nanno. It's big. I can't swallow it.

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  10. I actually miss rotary dial phones.

    And I DESPISE auto-flush toilets! I can flush a damn toilet. I don't need auto-flush. Frankly, I'd like to decide when I want to flush.

    I also HATE automatic sink faucets. Those fuckers suck.

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  11. Ms. Bastard- I am completely with you on the auto-flush and faucet things. Good Lord! And those auto-sensored freaking paper towel dispensers! You sit there and wave, wave, wave at the stupid machine and nothing comes out. A crank works lovely. But ooh...you might touch a GERM!

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  12. SB - those auto flushing toilets make me want to kill someone.

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