Knobs thumb|The rotary knobs on the front panel could be used as a dial box. (Photo of LINC-8) The LINC included a set of eight three-turn potentiometers (numbered 0-7) that could each be read by a computer instruction. The dial box was a convenient user input device at a time before general adoption of the mouse. For example, one knob could control the scaling of a displayed graph, and another might be used as a cursor to display the actual data value at a point.
Knobs thumb|The rotary knobs on the front panel could be used as a dial box. (Photo of LINC-8) The LINC included a set of eight three-turn potentiometers (numbered 0-7) that could each be read by a computer instruction The dial box was a convenient user input device at a time before general adoption of the mouse. For example, one knob could control the scaling of a displayed graph, and another might be used as a cursor to display the actual data value at a point.