the.com/buttons
Tiny doorways that decide whether you're dressed, armed, or one click from regret
means Buttons are small fasteners or knobs you push, click, or slip through holes — whether they hold your shirt closed or trigger a machine.
from From Old French 'boton,' meaning a bud or knob — something that sprouts or pushes out — itself rooted in a verb for thrusting or budding (a cousin of 'butt,' to push). The clothing fastener and the pressable knob share that same image of a small rounded thing that protrudes, ready to be pushed or pulled through. English borrowed it in the medieval period, when buttons were as much jewelry as utility.
- older than zippers
- Buttons existed millennia before buttonholes made them useful
- side split
- Men and women button on opposite sides by tradition
- red button myth
- No single nuclear launch button actually exists
- first use
- Bronze Age buttons were decoration, not fasteners
- panic origin
- Elevator close buttons often do absolutely nothing
button gwinnett signature — georgian signer of the declaration of independence whose autograph is rarest among the 56 signers
campaign buttons 1896 — william mckinley's presidential campaign buttons, among the earliest mass-produced political memorabilia