Joystick

Ever wonder where there word joystick originate from???
Well the first time i came across the word was when i was about 6 yearsold
in the age of Atari and Apple computers. Wanting to attract us to computer my father bought us an apple computer and some computer games. One of them was a war game, the kind you have to shoot the people. I suppose it was like Time Crisis except that everything was squarish and green.

Now we can actually used the keyboard to play it. You just press some key control to move right or left and you can press the space bar to shoot. It was okay at first, untill one day my dad came home with a weird device. Again it was squarish, i guess everything about computer at that time were squarish, but this device got a round thingy sticking up from the base, and it has buttons at the bottom. My father told us the device was called a JOYSTICK. And you know what it was a real joy to use. Suddenly i become unbeatable, and the device manage to glued me in front of computer for hours. The game was suddenly easy peasy.

I suppose that is what joystick means, a device to ease your task and adding some Joy to it. But the word itself, why do they name it that? Is it because it has stick in it and it actually gives joy to anyone who use it, well at least it gives moderate help?
Or is it more sinister than that? Recently as a joke my friend send a picture of a naked man playing playstation with a joystick, it was a private joke mind you. But i noticed the resemblence of the man's thingo and his joystick. Could it be that's where the word came from?
After all let's face it like it's machine counterpart it does gives joy to anyone who used it. Not that i know of course... ;)