The control box was a convenience and made the process fully programmable by the user. Which makes the machine far more flexible and useful.
I call it analog randomness because that's what I expect from the real world. For thousands of years, humans have used coins and dice to generate uncertain outcomes. And the fact that they typically generate only one of N outcomes (N=2 for coins, N=6 for common dice) is why humans use them. It is also why the Satoshi9000 uses them, and because its a kind of randomness that humans have an intuitive recognition of.