Toggle switches…old sci-fi featured tons of toggle switches. They were ubiquitous and far more dramatic than keyboards, mice, or—most bland of all—touch pads. When the science officer aboard the needle-shaped rocket on its voyage to Saturn was faced with a critical situation, nothing dramatized this more than the click clicking of a bank of toggle switches. This simple binary on/off switch found its way onto the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek, the Discovery One in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, and countless other rockets and saucers of the 50s and 60s era Sci-Fi. Much of this stemmed from their actual, real-world use in the NASA space program and just about every area of electronics and electrical engineering. They are still in use today, especially in automotive electronics. Sadly however the toggle switch has lost favor in science fiction. Ever since Star Trek: The Next Generation showed us the wonders of touch screens and the Matrix jacked us into cyberspace via computer terminals, the toggle switch—as far as science fiction is concerned—has been cast into the dustbin of obsolescence.
