Before Pixels: The Modular Industrial Dashboards That Ran the World
Before pixels: Modular industrial dashboards
During museum visits in Germany and Poland, I kept encountering modular industrial dashboards—the physical control panels that once monitored air traffic, subway trains, and power plants. They light up, count, and even have a day/night switch. I don't know much about them, but they're fascinating design and interaction systems, now largely replaced by software. If you know more, please write.
Don’t you just want to rotate it, no matter what it does?
- slg
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...
- euroderf
Helsinki has one on display in the mid-level concourse of the Hakaniemi metro station. Sadly, it has no blinking lights.
- voidUpdate
Does anyone know how these actually worked under the hood? Was it essentially just a mounting solution, and you wire them up how you need on the back, or were they essentially pluggable modules with some kind of control system attached to the board? I can't imagine it's the second option, given the timeframe, but I kinda want to see a system like that now
- krige
These very distinctly remind me of electric/electronic didactic "toys" from the at least 80s. Plastic cubes, containing a single (usually) circuit component, like switches, resistors, lights, coils, or just wire, with bare metal connectors on relevant sides and a symbol on top. You got a whole bag of them, as well as a gridded board you inserted the cubes into. Could make even usable stuff like simple radios.
- frnz
Very impressive. I also like this LECTRON-system by Gregor Greger from 1965. BRAUN bought the rights and then Dieter Rahms worked on the design in 1967.
Produced until 2022 (!)
You can still find some stuff on ebay with "baukasten braun lectron"
edit, Link to Wikipedia: