4 ms·

After reading this, it made me wonder... what was the first use of a real button?

• maxerickson 11y ago
  At least the telegraph, sometime in the first half of the 1800s. (it looks like there were a lot of experiments and ideas flying around, so I think it would take a historian specializing in the thing to point out which one used a button first. And then there could easily be some earlier use.)
  • ghaff 11y ago
    This presentation says a flashlight in 1898 http://www.slideshare.net/billder/history-of-the-button-at-sxsw http://www.slideshare.net/billder/history-of-the-button-at-s... but I don't really believe that. Storage batteries are almost exactly 100 years older. It seems reasonable to expect that an electrical button of some sort (depending upon how pedantic you want to be about button vs. switch etc.) would have been a pretty logical and straightforward development as soon as circuits needed to be broken and re-connected.
• breadbox 11y ago
  Do the keys on a keyboard instrument count? "The Greek engineer Ctesibius of Alexandria is credited with inventing the organ in the 3rd century BC." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ#History_and_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ#History_and_developm...