Number pad Vs. Phone layout 1

[TrojanSquirrel]

Back in 2003 I posted a question of no great importance!

I have always wondered why phone and pc/calculator numbers were different layouts.... Someone kindly replied with a link to

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question641.htm

but I was still unconvinced with their explanations.

After 3 years of thought in idle moments I think I have the definitive answer:

The old rotary dial phones had 'abc' on number 2 through to 'wxyz' on 9 as do push button phones. The explanation on howstuffworks partly resolves the issue by stating that western writing runs from left to right starting at the top, and as such the number 2 had to be at the top......

Problem solved????

 

[Grenage]

It's possible, but no more likely than any of the other theories? We don't use the letters here in the UK so they are pretty worthless to us. Did Americans use them back in the days of the rotary phone?


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[Sympology]

I belive it is because in the good old days, Telephone people lived and worked in the real world and count from 1 - 10, whereas computer operators lived in darkened rooms surround by punch cards and nerds with maths degrees and therefore most likely designed it around the fat it would take less effort to press 0 and 1


Stu..


And cue flames ( "I'm not a geek, I happen to like spend 18hrs a day in a darkened room")

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[maxthedork]

Grenage, yes, I remember rotary phones having the letters printed over the numbers. At least, the one in my house did (c. 1975 or so)

 

[jkl0]

Grenage,
They actually used the letters instead of numbers for the first three numbers of the telephone (didn't include area code).
Example: 396-1111 was EXP-1111

But this was definitely a ways before 1975.

 

[jkl0]

My mistake 397 not 386

 

[CobolKid]

The 1-2-3 a-b-c relationship theory makes the most sense. As for keyboard ten-keys, the first application I know of was on the IBM model 029 card punch first released in the late 1950’s. It was not a separate keypad like today, but was built into the alphabetic keys in a diamond like pattern on the right side of the keyboard. There were two shifts, the left shift
was labeled “Numeric” which shifted the ten key, and the right shift was labeled “Alphic,” I don’t recall the actual effect of both shifts on the other keys, other than they shared the standard number/punctuation key shifts in a way that only made sense to IBM. I do remember that the zero was low on the keyboard. I believe the logic was that the finger move downward is the easiest, and zero is the most frequently occurring number.

I’d bet that the keyboard layout was based upon an interpretation of statistics regarding numeric occurrences versus hand positioning, and had little to do with the telephone.

The letters on telephones came from the days when Bell Telephone Company actually named their buildings. As switches in those days were human and mechanical, they were typically huge affairs, massive patch panels for operators, and racks upon racks of ladder type relays that occupied many floors of large buildings. The prefix of U.S. telephone numbers were derived from the building name, and the switching unit within the building (which often related to the floor number) where the particular phone number’s wires terminated. For instance, building Sylvania, switch 0 (Sylvania 0), was abbreviated as “SY0,” which would be dialed as 790. Building Sylvania was located in Pasadena, CA, and served much of the northern & eastern Los Angeles suburbs.

The names were considered a part of phone numbers until the early 1960’s. If one called directory assistance, a typical reply would be something like “The number is Sylvania zero, one two three four.” A call to the Operator might be something like, “Mercury two, five four one two, please.” This worked fine when calls were primarily operator assisted, but with the advent of rotary dial telephones, the user now had to know the abbreviation to make a call. The names became a major problem quite fast.

Steve

 

[maxthedork]

Actually jkl0 is correct, and those exchanges grew out of the original method of connecting calls from one exchange to another, which was to pick up the phone and hit the receiver several times, which would ring the exchange operator. The caller would then state the area exchange and the number, such as "Pitman-9-5555." The operator would connect to the Pitman exchange, then the Pitman exchange operator would ring the 9th exchange, #5555. Later, each exchange was assigned a three-digit designator, which at the time was LT and then the exchange number 9. So then the number would become LT9-6250. LT of course is 58 so ultimately the letter designations were dropped for a 7-digit number, 589-5555.

 

[TrojanSquirrel]

Thanks for the info cobolkid.

Enlightening all round.... Who would have though the humble phone was so complex!

I only ever noticed the difference when I tried using the calculator function on my phone and kept getting really strange answers to any sum.

Also funny how ATMs are phone layout.... Comms again I suppose.

 

[Sympology]

No lets really confuse things:

With softphones (Ip phones on your pc) the softphone has a Telephone layout, but you'll more than likely type on the Numeric pad. So the key presses won't physically match !

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004