Patent 7880572 was granted and assigned to Panasonic on February, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
First rotator (25) and second rotator (29) rotating according to a rocking operation of outer lever (23) are provided. Magnetism of magnets (26) and (30) mounted on these rotators are detected by magnetic detecting elements (32) and (33) and output as a detected signal. Control portion (34) detects a rotation angle of each rotator from this detected signal and outputs an operation signal corresponding to the detected rotation angle.