[i-TRIXX] ON and OFF

 Do you think Edison used a switch in his experiments? And if so, what did it look like? My guess is that he used a toggle switch – the old-fashioned kind with a big handle, mounted on a sturdy wooden board to keep all the components in place. For some time now, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a series of articles or a small book on switches and clever ways to turn devices on and off. Everything from simple switches to light switches, low-voltage and high-voltage switches, transistors as switches, switching equipment partially off in the standby state, mercury switches (now forbidden) for detecting motion, and how you can use physical phenomena such as speech, pressure, motion, height differences, water, light, fire, and so on to activate a switch.

I’m writing this during the Elektor presence at the ESC show in Boston. There we meet a lot of good folks, and they visit our booth to show us all sorts of things. Consider the man in the photo: while watching a screen from the corner of his eye, he operates a computer with his voice. He’s called “Golden I.” Naturally, when you’re having a conversation you have to be careful to avoid the voice commands you use to control the computer. Terms such as open, close, file, mail, and so on can confuse the computer and disturb the conversation, or cause the wearer to glance nervously into the little screen. Actually, this is also a sort of switch – I wonder what would happen if you suddenly called out ‘ON’ or ‘OFF’ while standing next to this man? Would his eyes go into standby, or does he also have a screensaver? For his sake, I hope not.

If you know an interesting way to turn something on or off (people, animals, cars, radios, TVs, etc.), you’re more than welcome to send your ideas to theelectronicball@elektor.com.

Wisse Hettinga