Quest for the Whistler Button

As someone who has never seen Sneakers, I would have loved a clip of the button press that spawned this journey. What did it sound like?

I thought these looked familiar, I have product that uses them, but a version with dual LEDs. The CFFA3000 hard drive &#x2F; floppy emulator for the Apple ][ used them in a floppy disc control panel.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shop.dreher.net&#x2F;shop?olsPage=products%2Flimit-3-per-customer-cffa3000-remote-switch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shop.dreher.net&#x2F;shop?olsPage=products%2Flimit-3-per-...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreher.net&#x2F;?s=projects&#x2F;CFforAppleII&amp;c=projects&#x2F;CFforAppleII&#x2F;main.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreher.net&#x2F;?s=projects&#x2F;CFforAppleII&amp;c=projects&#x2F;CFforA...</a>

Follow-up: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newscrewdriver.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;a-delight-for-the-button-connoisseur&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newscrewdriver.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;a-delight-for-the-butt...</a>

Where I did my phd, we had nmr spectrometers that had to be shimmed using a console with these exact switches. I loved interacting with that console..: It was at the same futuristic and absurdly old fashioned. Futuretro.<p>Edit: oh sweet lord they&#x27;re listed on ebay. Imagine gutting this things&#x27; innards and turning it into a usb input device...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ebay.com&#x2F;itm&#x2F;Bruker-BSMS-Boss-Keyboard-Z012706-1268-&#x2F;264459946862" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ebay.com&#x2F;itm&#x2F;Bruker-BSMS-Boss-Keyboard-Z012706-1...</a>

I recognized the buttons immediately as they are fairly common in vintage synths of Roland, Korg and Sequential among many others.<p>And at least in my Mono&#x2F;Poly the button is clearly not a single component but a combination of a tactile switch with a led and the cap.

At around the same time, 1990 - 1992, a partner and I made a rack mounted utility unit that included a tuner, a metronome, surge protected outlets and rack lights. We used buttons almost identical to these from Digi-Key. Mouser was also a big vendor of ours.

....aaaand now I’m buying braille training books on eBay. Thanks. :D<p>see also: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ebay.com&#x2F;itm&#x2F;143224299851" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ebay.com&#x2F;itm&#x2F;143224299851</a><p>(nick TOTALLY unrelated.)

This post makes me think that I could have a blog if I could avoid going straight to the point and I could build a story around my digikey investigations

Ha! The buttons in the movie were braille-labelled <i>and had a red led when active</i>. Why the LED? It reminds me of the braille on drive-thru ATMs.