Yesterday I documented my quest to track down a button I saw on a prop used in the movie Sneakers which premiered 28 years ago. Eventually learning that they were Omron B3J-2100s, and they are still available for purchase from Digi-Key. Given the age of the movie, plus the fact this little detail was not important to the plot, plus the fact the rows of buttons were on screen for only roughly five seconds, I expected my blog post to quickly disappear into footnotes of the internet. Like everything else on this blog it was just a note from my personal explorations. Maybe it'll receive an occasional a visitor, here to learn how to get these buttons for themselves.

Judging by web traffic, I was quite mistaken. I knew that the movie made impressions on others like myself, but I underestimated how many of us were out there. And even more surprisingly, these buttons made an impression on people as well. I had no idea there were so many button connoisseurs out there whose appreciation for a switch goes beyond whether it can reliable close and open a circuit. My blog post and associated Tweet were picked up by Adafruit blog and someone even submitted it to Hacker News where it was as high as #13 for a brief time. Amazing.

Its popularity also received feedback from many others. I found the prop in the movie was a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002, but several people brought up the Roland TR-808 and there was also a mention of the Oberheim OB-X. They all used similar looking buttons for similar purposes: select options and an associated LED to indicates the active item. However, despite the similarity (and the TR-808 uses color to great effect) they are not the same Omron B3J buttons of a Prophet 2002.

I started posting a few corrections, but then I stopped. I realized that people were just sharing their own fond memories and there is no particular reason I have to point out they weren't Omron B3Js. If someone is fond of a stylish button, what's the point of taking away their joy? For the sake of pedantic correctness? Nah, we're all connoisseurs of our own favorites. They have theirs, and I have Omron B3J.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuIheGaiFLM&t=80s

Thanks to [garrettlarson] on Hacker News, we have a link to a YouTube clip where we can see the Prophet 2002 and its row of Omron B3J-2100s. (Go to ~1:20 if embedded time offset isn't working.)