"Ever wonder who came up with the order of numbers on a telephone? Ever wonder why it isn’t the same as those on a calculator, or a keyboard, ascending from lowest to highest? After all, adding machines and mechanical calculators were around for at least a few hundred years before the invention of the pushbutton phone."
"Turns out, the standard descending 3×3 (plus 1) grid we’ve grown up on might have been a lot different. The 18 options above were presented to various focus groups. They come from a report issued in 1960 by The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, just before pushbutton phones went mainstream.In addition to key arrangements, other categories of design features were studied, like force-displacement characteristics and button-top size/design."
Check out the rest of David Israel's concise but informative post on the 17 Pushbutton Configurations that Didn’t Make the Cut.
That's Right,
HMK
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