Telephone vs Calculator/Remote Keypads

Great question! The good news is that the 456 keys are in the same locations.

Actually, I would bet that Bell felt that they had the latitude to take a fresh canvas and do what they though would fit the broadest range of people. Bell may have had good reason to think so! I believe that there were far more rotary phones in homes than mechanical calculators when they introduced the numeric keypad in the sixties.

some of the early digital phones had pushbuttons in a ring like a dial phone.

I think they placed the 123 from upper left in a line as people automatically looked for the 1 at the upper left hand of the dial? to make the change easy. put it at the bottom = less intuitive

Actually, the digit one was approximately at the 2 O'Clock position and the numbers incremented counter clockwise with the last digit being 0.

That's true. It has been so long since I saw one that I had forgotten that..

In a similar vein, can anyone explain why electronic rotary controls, like volume etc, are clockwise to increase whereas hydraulic, water taps etc, are anticlockwise to increase?

Some places have water taps the other way. I found a few like that in France.

I know hydraulics has a standard, but I suspect water faucets vary.

In fact I see hot and cold opposite in many sinks in Canada US.

Actually the comparison between the telephone keypad and 9-key register/adding machine from which the electronic adding machine and calculator keypads derived is a false one. When the touchtone phone keypad was developed as a descendent from the rotory-dial phone by Western Electric (the manufacturing subsidiary of the Bell monopoly), the idea was simply that the numbers and letters would be read left to right, top to bottom just as with reading text. One must remember that all numeric telephone numbers, as well as area codes, was a fairly late development in telephones. (One must remember also that when new technologies are introduced, it is generally best to make the transition as comfortable and as familiar for consumers as possible--in order to gain quickest public acceptance.) Up until well into the 60's (70's and beyond in some areas) phone numbers were designated by a word (an exchange/end-office name) and numerals--starting with one numeral and advancing to 4 numerals over the years as the phone system (or should I say, systems) expanded--until the 60's thru 70's during which most of the original area code assignments were established; and touch-tone dialing became generally ubiquitous. So someone in the 30's, say, might have the phone number BR-549. By the 50's one might have a phone number, say, AT-8541 (ATlantic 8-541). By the late 50's and early 60's came a split (the adding of numbers to the exchange names), whereby the alpha + number count reached its maximum--for example, EXpress-1-3903 and, soon after, the alpha identifiers began to be dropped in favor of all numeric prefix numbers--and with it the addition of many more number possibilities to go with the expanding phone subscribership. And, the exchange prefix part of the phone numbers gradually became less effective for determining where a particular phone was located geographically. In short, the rotary dial, and the touchtone phone keypad after it, had the benefit of being easy to "read" and find numaric and alpha characters...because the touch tone keypad reads left to right, top to bottom, just like text; not to mention that it was Western Electric's original choice as to how the numbers would be displayed. Any other of the very few manufacturers at the time would have been foolish to try and buck the standard set by Western; rather than having an insignificant portion of sales (to independent phone companies who in turn only leased phones to customers just like Bell), any attempt to improvise a different keypad arrangement would have resulted in their having virtually no sales at all. Oh, incidentally, the 1 at the top and 0/operator at the bottom made additional sense with rotary dials, in that the process of routing a number between telephones or telephone party lines was essentially a counting process. If we express the setting of call routing switches as clicks (the audible analogy of pulses on a bi-functional phone instrument), as the dial was turned one click (as the dial passed 1) would indicate one switch position (at the exchange) from the bottom, two-two positions, and so forth up to the 0 or tenth position, or operator if no exchange was dialed.

Now, going to the 9-key adder, or the calculator that descended from it, its keypad would be more analogous to a QWERTY keyboard than to a phone dial or touchtone pad. What this means is, that these input devises were designed with the intention that work would be done with them--not simply locating and dialing or pecking a small number of numerals/letters from time to time. Consider, that a vocational typist had the job task of striking as many keys as possible, in a specified order, without looking at the keys, and in the shortest possible time. Here, the typist will rest her fingers automatically on the appropriate "home" keys and, from there her or his (most earlier typists were male) fingers will be able to rapidly (i.e., reflexively) find any key on the keyboard, without thought, without looking. So the design of the QWERTY keyboard came about as a result of studies of how frequently certain letters and certain letter combinations would need to be struck in order to produce a typewritten page with the greatest overall speed and accuracy. From there it was just a matter of training typists to the keyboard arrangement.

Now consider the calculator keypad which descended--again as a mass production work tool, not a convenience devise--from the mechanical and later electrical (motorized) adding machines that came before. In this case the operators for the most part were cashiers, keypunch operators, data entry persons, and so on; persons who were trained (much like typists) to be able to strike numbers in a certain order as rapidly as possible, all without ever looking at any keys (because they were looking at the source material to be transcribed). So, on the nine-key keypad you had (and still have) a base position: the 4, 5, and 6 at the center of the pad. The pointer, or index finger would operate the 1, 4 and 7; the middle finger the 2, 5, and 6, and the ring finger the 3, 6, and 9. With these finger assignments, just like on the QWERTY keyboard, the fingers eventually "learn" to find the correct key in an instant, without thought, without the eyes seeing the key. Anchoring the three fingers (and the little finger which "floated" and struck the operation/enter keys) was the thumb which rested continuously above the zero (or double zero) key(s). Since the thumb would be positioned at the bottom from an anatomical point of view, it was only natural that the other keys would ascend in numeric order, from the zero going up. To reverse the order and have the zero at the top, or have it at bottom but the 7, 8, and 9 adjacent to it, would have made for rather awkward, and inefficient keying in (transposing) of figures. Going back far enough in time, it can be seen that there was also a mechanical advantage to the standard nine-key layout, something similar to the mechanical advantage of the rotary phone dial layout, except in reverse. With the original "calculators" (the early, mechanical adding machines) it was necessary to reach forward, grasp a lever, and pull the lever towards the machine operator in order to "process" the registered numbers--to perform the operation. Since the lever handle itself was pulled in the direction of the operator, the action went in the direction away from the operator. So the action would essentially count (shift & combine) the key settings from smallest numeral to larger numerals. As the lever hand was returned forward, the action would reverse and clear the key selected register settings in preparation for the next number entry operation.

Summarizing, it might be said that the market set the standard for calculator keypads, and (as will be shown) for present-day touch tone key layouts. As to the latter, when the touchtone phone was first being conceived and designed in the 50's and early 60', surveys were indeed done to consider the layout of the new devises. The result was that the existing 9-key layout was preferred as the most efficient and most compatible with existing technologies and practices, and with operator skills and training of the day. Similar tinkerings with the 9-key layout were done as well before deciding on retaining the tried and well proven approach. It was not until miniaturization of the calculator keypad (and mass consumption of calculators by untrained owners) began to make blind, three-finger keying impractical for most, that reversion to hunt-and-peck began to be the norm for keypad usage, at least among those other than data entry employees/contractors for hire and the like. And with that change, came the natural question as to why the phone and calculator keypads are distinctive from each other.

This post supplants the antecedent post. Typo corrections and fatigue induced edit errors are shown in bold face. So skip on down because you've already read most of this.

Actually the comparison between the telephone keypad and 9-key register/adding machine from which the electronic adding machine and calculator keypads derived is a false one. When the touchtone phone keypad was developed as a descendent from the rotory-dial phone by Western Electric (the manufacturing subsidiary of the Bell monopoly), the idea was simply that the numbers and letters would be read left to right, top to bottom just as with reading text. One must remember that all numeric telephone numbers, as well as area codes, was a fairly late development in telephones. (One must remember also that when new technologies are introduced, it is generally best to make the transition as comfortable and as familiar for consumers as possible--in order to gain quickest public acceptance.) Up until well into the 60's (70's and beyond in some areas) phone numbers were designated by a word (an exchange/end-office name) and numerals--starting with one numeral and advancing to 4 numerals over the years as the phone system (or should I say, systems) expanded--until the 60's thru 70's during which most of the original area code assignments were established; and touch-tone dialing became generally ubiquitous. So someone in the 30's, say, might have the phone number BR-549. By the 50's one might have a phone number, say, AT-8541 (ATlantic 8-541). By the late 50's and early 60's came a split (the adding of numbers to the exchange names), whereby the alpha + number count reached its maximum--for example, EXpress-1-3903 and, soon after, the alpha identifiers began to be dropped in favor of all numeric prefix numbers--and with it the addition of many more number possibilities to go with the expanding phone subscribership. And, the exchange prefix part of the phone numbers gradually became less effective for determining where a particular phone was located geographically. In short, the rotary dial, and the touchtone phone keypad after it, had the benefit of being easy to "read" and find numaric and alpha characters...because the touch tone keypad reads left to right, top to bottom, just like text; not to mention that it was Western Electric's original choice as to how the numbers would be displayed. Any other of the very few manufacturers at the time would have been foolish to try and buck the standard set by Western; rather than having an insignificant portion of sales (to independent phone companies who in turn only leased phones to customers just like Bell), any attempt to improvise a different keypad arrangement would have resulted in their having virtually no sales at all. Oh, incidentally, the 1 at the top and 0/operator at the bottom made additional sense with rotary dials, in that the process of routing a number between telephones or telephone party lines was essentially a counting process. If we express the setting of call routing switches as clicks (the audible analogy of pulses on a bi-functional phone instrument), as the dial was turned one click (as the dial passed 1) would indicate one switch position (at the exchange) from the bottom, two-two positions, and so forth up to the 0 or tenth position, or operator if no exchange was dialed.

Now, going to the 9-key adder, or the calculator that descended from it, its keypad would be more analogous to a QWERTY keyboard than to a phone dial or touchtone pad. What this means is, that these input devises were designed with the intention that work would be done with them--not simply locating and dialing or pecking a small number of numerals/letters from time to time. Consider, that a vocational typist had the job task of striking as many keys as possible, in a specified order, without looking at the keys, and in the shortest possible time. Here, the typist will rest her fingers automatically on the appropriate "home" keys and, from there her or his (most earlier typists were male) fingers will be able to rapidly (i.e., reflexively) find any key on the keyboard, without thought, without looking. So the design of the QWERTY keyboard came about as a result of studies of how frequently certain letters and certain letter combinations would need to be struck in order to produce a typewritten page with the greatest overall speed and accuracy. From there it was just a matter of training typists to the keyboard arrangement.

Now consider the calculator keypad which descended--again as a mass production work tool, not a convenience devise--from the mechanical and later electrical (motorized) adding machines that came before. In this case the operators for the most part were cashiers, keypunch operators, data entry persons, and so on; persons who were trained (much like typists) to be able to strike numbers in a certain order as rapidly as possible, all without ever looking at any keys (because they were looking at the source material to be transcribed). So, on the nine-key keypad you had (and still have) a base position: the 4, 5, and 6 at the center of the pad. The pointer, or index finger would operate the 1, 4 and 7; the middle finger the 2, 5, and 8, and the ring finger the 3, 6, and 9. With these finger assignments, just like on the QWERTY keyboard, the fingers eventually "learn" to find the correct key in an instant, without thought, without the eyes seeing the key. Anchoring the three fingers (and the little finger which "floated" and struck the operation/enter keys) was the thumb which rested continuously above the zero (or double zero) key(s). Since the thumb would be positioned at the bottom from an anatomical point of view, it was only natural that the other keys would ascend in numeric order, from the zero going up. To reverse the order and have the zero at the top, or have it at bottom but the 7, 8, and 9 adjacent to it, would have made for rather awkward, and inefficient keying in (transposing) of figures. Going back far enough in time, it can be seen that there was also a mechanical advantage to the standard nine-key layout, something similar to the mechanical advantage of the rotary phone dial layout, except in reverse. With the original "calculators" (the early, mechanical adding machines) it was necessary to reach forward, grasp a lever, and pull the lever towards the machine operator in order to "process" the registered numbers--to perform the operation. Since the lever handle itself was pulled in the direction of the operator, the action went in the direction away from the operator. So the action would essentially count (shift & combine) the key settings from smallest numeral to larger numerals. As the lever hand was returned forward, the action would reverse and clear the key selected register settings in preparation for the next number entry operation.

Summarizing, it might be said that the market set the standard for calculator keypads, and (as will be shown) for present-day touch tone key layouts. As to the latter, when the touchtone phone was first being conceived and designed in the 50's and early 60', surveys were indeed done to consider the layout of the new devises. The result was that the reading order layout was preferred as the most compatible with customer preferences and ease of use. Similar tinkerings and preference surveys were done with the 9-key layout, and it was concluded that the existing layout was most compatible with existing technologies and practices, and with operator skills and training of the day--and also most economical to implement. It was not until miniaturization of the calculator keypad (and mass consumption of calculators by untrained owners) began to make blind, three-finger keying impractical for most, that reversion to hunt-and-peck began to be the norm for keypad usage, at least among those other than data entry employees/contractors for hire and the like. And with that change, came the natural question as to why the phone and calculator keypads are distinctive from each other.

Blimey! Has anyone read all of that?!!

Actually, the qwerty layout was evolved with mechanically linked keys and the object was to slow the typist down by avoiding a mechanical pile up of the striking ends attached to each key. The keys were positioned to maximize hand/finger travel.

It was quite possible to jam the early machines by typing too quickly. The speed demon typists actually had stiffer spring installed that required a lot more force to strike and print, but which disengaged from the paper faster.

the dvorak keyboard is now much faster, but so many keybaoards are the qwerty and so many are trained on it that adoption has been slow

That's what I have always been told...

Also the qwerty layout was designed to have the keys most used clustered together under each hand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty

Possibly there was a misunderstanding in what you learned--and the QWERTY keyboard was not intended to slow a typist down. Any level pulling type keyboard was subject to "type striker" conflict...a problem that could only be resolved--and eventually was--with the advent of the "ball" type, single element typewriters, such as the IBM selectric. The concept between increasing space between frequently actuated keys pertained not to the keys themselves but, rather to the levers. Since type face conflict (piling up, as you describe it) was most likely to arise among adjacent and nearby pivot levers, one aspect to the QWERTY development was to assign sequential keystrokes to alternate hands--this too for sake of speed. Because keys striking from the left and right are far less likely to meet and jamb, than keys arriving at the paper from either the left or the right side of the type lever arch. So you are correct, fundamentally, that QWERTY will tend to separate keys, but it's separation between hands, not fingers; and separation in space, not time, between the type levers. Hope this makes things clearer.