Where Employed
Paddles first appeared in video arcade games with Atari Inc.'s Pong in 1972, while the first console to use paddles was Magnavox's Odyssey that same year. The Atari 2600 used paddles for several of its games, as did early home computers such as the Commodore VIC-20. True (potentiometer-based) paddles are almost never employed any more because they stop reading accurately when the potentiometer contacts get dirty or worn, because turning them too far can break them and because they require more-expensive analog sensing, whereas quadrature encoder-based controllers can be sensed digitally. Any recent game that has paddle-type control uses a quadrature encoder instead, even if the game uses paddles on screen (like Arkanoid).
Read more about this topic: Paddle (game Controller)
Famous quotes containing the word employed:
“No—is a term very frequently employed by the fair, when they mean everything else but a negative. Their yes is always yes; but their no is not always no.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. M, Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany, p. 203 (April 1803)
“There is only one vice, which may be found in life with as strong features, and as high a colouring as needs be employed by any satyrist or comic poet; and that is AVARICE.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)