The study concluded that the three-by-three version with 1-2-3 in the top row was the easiest for people to master. The real answer seems to lie in a study conducted at Bell Labs titled “Human Factor Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushbutton Telephone Sets.” Published in the July 1960 issue of the Bell System Technical Journal, the report says that researchers tested a number different layouts including the three-by-three matrix with the zero at the bottom versions with two rows of five numbers, arrayed either horizontally or vertically and circular configurations with numbers laid out in clockwise and counterclockwise fashion. But accounts from people who worked for Bell Labs at the time indicate that this version isn’t necessarily the case. One common explanation for the discrepancy between the phone and the calculator is that phone company engineers intentionally reversed the calculator layout because their research showed that people who were already adept at using a calculator punched the buttons too quickly for the telephone switching equipment to correctly register the numbers. Back then, the industry-standard typical calculator had nine columns of numbers, with 10 numbers in a column, the lowest digits at the bottom, starting with 0 and moving up to 9, and was basically a mechanical adding machine that closely resembled a cash register. The existing rotary phone with its circular dial and counterclockwise number arrangement, with the 1 sitting in the upper right, was one. There were two logical models, of course. The question: how to arrange the numbers. The place, Bell Laboratories, where researchers are preparing to introduce an alternative to the rotary telephone, something they called push-button dialing (which later came to be marketed as “Touch Tone” dialing). So what gives? Why aren’t all such devices created equal, anyway? After all, here are three devices that we use on a daily basis, and they all share a basic layout - an array of 10 numbers in a three-by-three arrangement with the zero sitting down below. Q U E S T I O N: Why do the numbers on telephones go from 1 in the top left corner to 9 in the bottom right, while calculators and computer number pads go from 1 in the bottom left corner to 9 in the top right corner? - Joel K.Ī N S W E R: A wonderful question, gentlemen, and something that I have puzzled over myself. Q U E S T I O N: Why do the numeric keypads on computers and calculators reverse the configuration on a telephone? I’m certain that thousands of wrong numbers are dialed daily because of this.
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