1. Input apparatus for controlling the operation of an appliance, the input apparatus comprising: a housing containing the appliance; absent from the appliance a keyboard for entry of separate keystrokes representing individual letters of the alphabet; an image input aperture in the housing and against which a portion of the tip of one of the operator's digits may be placed; a light source disposed proximate the image input aperture and that emits light which illuminates a portion of the tip of the digit placed against the image input aperture; an image exit surface optically coupled to the image input aperture and from which reflected light that is an image of the tip of the operator's digit light may exit; a motion transducer disposed proximate the image exit surface and that receives the image, from which the motion transducer creates pixelized representations comprising a newly sampled array, a previously sampled array and shifted versions of one of those arrays that are its nearest neighbor arrays, which one array and its nearest neighbor arrays are correlated with the non-shifted array to produce motion signals that correspond to motions in the directions of coordinate axes by the tip of the digit moving against the image input surface and that represent operator input to affect the operation of the appliance; an appliance control circuit coupled to the motion signals, disposed internal to the appliance and that controls the operation of the appliance by altering the value of at least one appliance control parameter in accordance with motion of the tip of the digit against the image input aperture.