Joystick

A joystick is an input device with a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it controls; also called a flight stick or control column, it is the principal control device in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, mounted centrally or to the side, with switches for the pilot's functions, and its name most likely traces to the early twentieth-century French pilot Robert Esnault-Pelterie, though the earliest documented use of the word is a 1909 diary entry by the pilot Robert Loraine. Beyond aviation, joysticks control video games, typically carrying push-buttons a computer can read, and the analog stick, a popular variant, appears on modern game consoles; industrial versions operate cranes, trucks, underwater vehicles, wheelchairs and surveillance cameras, and miniature finger-operated versions serve as input on mobile phones. C. B. Mirick of the United States Naval Research Laboratory invented the electrical two-axis joystick and patented it in 1926, Germany developed its own electrical joystick around 1944 for guiding missiles, the device became widespread in radio-controlled model aircraft by the 1960s, and NASA used joysticks during the Apollo program, including in testing the lunar lander.