Question - origin of 'Joystick'

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Boac
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Question - origin of 'Joystick'

#1 Post by Boac » Thu Sep 06, 2018 1:44 pm

Discarding Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Robert Loraine, James Henry Joyce, and A. E. George for a moment, should the term be considered sexist? What say the ladies? Is it simply something that gave the early aviators 'Joy' or was it the erect stiff thing between their legs that needed grasping firmly and waggling about that was the derivation?

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Re: Question - origin of 'Joystick'

#2 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Sep 06, 2018 4:41 pm

A version of the tale told to me many decades ago was that the first one to be named was originally named after its deviser, a Geordie called called George. It was originally called a Georgestick, but soon became corrupted to 'joystick'.

He didn't invent it, he just made it popular in Britain and the name stuck. It originally included rudder control by torsion.

Dunno what the ffrench call the 2-axis joystick which was said to have been invented by Bleriot.

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Re: Question - origin of 'Joystick'

#3 Post by Boac » Thu Sep 06, 2018 6:17 pm

I know what Lord Flashheart would have said...


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Re: Question - origin of 'Joystick'

#4 Post by Cacophonix » Sat Sep 08, 2018 6:07 am

A Great Idea That's All in the Wrist
By TOM ZELLER JR.JUNE 5, 2005
At the recent E3 Gaming Expo in Los Angeles, where video game juggernauts Microsoft (maker of the Xbox), Sony (PlayStation) and Nintendo (GameCube) offered glimpses of their next-generation consoles, no mention was made of Robert Esnault-Pelterie.

Yet millions of gaming enthusiasts (and crane operators and cellphone owners and even the captain of the world's largest, longest, tallest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2) owe the early-20th-century French aviator a debt of gratitude for his invention: the joystick. It was first used for aircraft controls, but much else about its origins -- both mechanical and etymological -- are matters of debate. The first citation of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from the diary of the British actor and aviator Robert Loraine. In 1910, he made this entry: "In order that he not blunder inadvertently into the air, the central lever -- otherwise the cloche, or joy-stick is tied well forward."

While some researchers have assumed an X-rated origin, Michael Quinion, a sleuth of international English and editor of the Web site worldwidewords.org, suggests that a G-rated definition is more likely: "The exhilaration felt by an early pilot's journey into the air," is how he describes it. As for the device itself, some argue that the credit should go not to Mr. Esnault-Pelterie, but to a Missouri pilot and inventor, James Henry Joyce -- thus, "Joyce stick."
But a number of historians, including Edward Tenner, a senior research associate at the National History Museum's Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, side with Mr. Esnault-Pelterie.

Wherever the idea came from, the translation of human will into machine movement via a single stick may be one of the most overlooked achievements of the last 100 years.

"I would say that it was the 20th century's distinctive contribution to the interface between people and machines," said Mr. Tenner, who is author of "Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity." He is documenting Mr. Esnault-Pelterie's unsuccessful patent battles with American manufacturers of similar devices in the fledgling days of aviation.

"It was a cultural breakthrough that was initially related to the new possibilities and demands of flight," Mr. Tenner said, "and then once it was there in the culture, a lot of people saw it could be used for many other things."
In fact, the joystick moved easily from the mechanical world of planes and cranes to the digitally mediated world of computers: from the red nub at the center of an I.B.M. laptop, to the navigational pads on some cellphones and the mushroom-like thumb sticks that still occupy a central place, amid the buttons and triggers, on today's video game controllers.

The joystick's translation of human movement into machine movement elegantly satisfies what Ben Bederson, the director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, calls the three virtues of an input device (which feeds information to a machine): simplicity, efficiency and control.

"It's pretty successful," Mr. Bederson said.

As for the debate over who invented it, Mr. Esnault-Pelterie has an interesting rival. In 2001, after the H.L. Hunley, a Confederate-era submarine, was pulled from the waters off Charleston, S.C., archaeologists discovered that it had a sophisticated single-stick steering device. A state senator from Charleston, Glenn McConnell, made a claim on South Carolina's behalf. "This could be the world's first joystick for navigating a vessel," he crowed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/week ... wrist.html

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Re: Question - origin of 'Joystick'

#5 Post by Boac » Sat Sep 08, 2018 7:22 am

I still want to hear from the ladies! EG Reddo - when you first firmly grasped one (assuming you did at some point fly 'real' aeroplanes :)) ) did you experience a frisson of excitement?

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