Before pixels: Modular industrial dashboards | Hacker News Reader

Before pixels: Modular industrial dashboards

unsung.aresluna.org

15 pointsleephillips6 comments

There's really so much physicality to interacting with objects that we've lost as we switch to more and more touch screens and capacitive buttons. Also the reassuring "thunk" of a nice chunky button to confirm you've pressed it is just so important to user confidence

Don't worry, now we're about to completely lose touch too: Now you'll just talk to an AI and take its word for having done what you wanted :)

The photos on that article are nice inspiration for some pseudo-steampunk/vacuumpunk stuff.

Check out this chunky industrial Bakelite switch with a resonant thunking spring clicking action that you have to overshoot each of the four rotations by 45 degrees before it clicks. It feels so good, it's nice to just turn around and around just for pure audio and kinesthetic pleasure. So much better than a Tesla iPad control. (Never mind the gorilla!)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o_n5W2I2p_M

It's from the Amsterdam Bakelite Collection, founded/curated by Reindert Groot. It isn't actually a museum you can visit at this moment, but it's a huge beautiful collection, with lots of interesting photos and articles and newsletters online, and parts of it surface in museums around the world from time to time.

http://www.amsterdambakelitecollection.com/

There are some beautiful photos in the newsletters, like the colossal steel 1500 Kg two-part injection mold, and the restored SAAL Soft SPEAKER with the Bakelite Bell:

http://www.amsterdambakelitecollection.com/newsletter202411/...

Other interesting Bakelite links from previous Hacker News discussions:

1956 Philips 353A Bakelite Vacuum Tube Radio Repair & Restoration

https://retrorepairsandrefurbs.com/2022/09/06/1956-philips-3...

Bakelite to the Future - 1950s rotary phone ESP32 bluetooth headset

https://blog.waleson.com/2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-ro...

> Don’t you just want to rotate it, no matter what it does?

A grandparent's house had light switches that looked kind of like this but black (bakelite). And they are very satisfying, a good amount of resistance while rotating, then click.

I recently watched both the 1974 and 2009 versions of The Taking of Pelham 123 and it really stood out how the industrial designs of their respective eras helped elevate the original[1][2] in comparison to the remake[3][4].

[1] - https://media.doblu.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Taking-of...

[2] - https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/21019979/1118full-the-taking...

[3] - https://c8.alamy.com/comp/K3KWM1/the-taking-of-pelham-123-da...

[4] - https://press.moviewalker.jp/api/resizeimage/content/main/mv...

The very cool https://www.astrouxds.com aims to be the pixel version of the physical dashboards. It's a very cool design library.

Not related to Astro the templating engine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com