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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. Check out the 18 options below 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.
After the jump, you’ll see the first figure, which shows all the arrangements the various focus groups were presented with (n.b. Group I-A – the same as the calculator). The second shows the four finalists, plus the original rotary arrangement. (I-A apparently didn’t make the cut.)
The focus groups were tested on keying times (error rates were calculated) and asked which they preferred aesthetically. It’s especially cool to note how the winner, the now-standard 3×3 plus 1, had a much larger error rate than the two vertical columns. Yet the two vertical columns arrangement was the least preferred overall. It seems the most popular, and the one the focus groups had the least trouble working, was the one that mimicked what they were already used to: the standard rotary dial.
I guess like Ma Bell, the designers got the ill communication… and went with the new one that scored best across the boards, hoping future generations would forget the dials of the past.
They were right.
I think it’s odd that they didn’t just stick to the old rotary configuration. Although I’ve never had one, so people might have hated that type.
posted by Tricia on 12-3-2008 at 7:02 am
Interestingly, I just read an article last week about the positioning of the 4 arrow keys on your standard keyboard. I’ve added the link - click on my initials.
posted by KJ on 12-3-2008 at 9:15 am
I like the 3×3 configuration we use.
If I am in dim light or squinting to read those tiny buttons on my cell phone I can still figure out which button is which by feeling for left, middle or right.
Same as shifting gears on a car. You can always shift to the correct gear by pushing left, middle and right.
posted by Morris on 12-3-2008 at 10:09 am
Interestingly enough, I have an old phone with the buttons arranged as the rotary-dial. An old Ericsson phone. That arrangement didn’t last though.. today all the phones sold have the american standard button arrangement.
posted by Steamboat WilliE on 12-3-2008 at 3:55 pm
Neat piece of information. It still doesn’t really explain why the current 3×3 is opposite of the calculator or key pad. If Ma Bell was going to do their own thing anyway, why not go with the more familiar arrangement. I’ve always wondered, and I guess I still will.
posted by erik on 12-3-2008 at 4:05 pm
The reason is simple. They went with the configuration that people liked the best. They saw the old way, wondered why it was illogical, and went with the right way from their perspective. They went with their data. Which is pretty admirable, if flawed in this case. Now if only the PC keyboard wasn’t qwerty. That would have been the right way to go, since this configuration was designed to slow people down, not to speed them up.
posted by DampeS8N on 12-3-2008 at 6:05 pm
I think the configuration comes from Alphonse Chapanis (one of the fathers of human factors/ergonomics).
posted by A. on 12-4-2008 at 12:42 am
I heard the reason the configuration is turned upside-down from a 10-key is that proficient key-ers could input the numbers more quickly than the phone system could handle. Fact? Don’t know. As my grandpa always said, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story!”
posted by Heather on 12-4-2008 at 2:39 am
Thank god they chose a 3×3 grid, otherwise the invention of cellphones would have necessitated the creation of a third layout pattern.
posted by Simon on 12-6-2008 at 12:26 pm
Far more interesting to me is that we still call it “dialing” a phone even though there are no longer any dials.
I don’t think the cell phone would have required the invention of a 3×3 grid any more than the invention of a keyboard required QWERTY — and this is someone who is trying to learn single-handed dvorak to speed up my work.
posted by Karl on 12-6-2008 at 5:49 pm
Hmmmmm…IB reminds me of something…just can’t put my finger on it.
posted by Tenmile on 12-6-2008 at 10:51 pm
“dialing”… much the way I chuckled when my friend said he was “filming” from his digital camera.
posted by Susan on 12-6-2008 at 11:17 pm
“After all, adding machines and mechanical calculators were around for at least a few hundred years before the invention of the pushbutton phone.”
Erm, no, this is not quite right now is it? An abacus is about as different from a telephone as it is from a pocket calculator. Mechanical adding machines may have first invented in the 1600s but, really, we are talking about the 20th century. And even then, they did not have a standarised number formation.
in fact if we are to believe what’s in the rest of you article, then the phone formation and that of the calculator was developed at around the same time.
posted by Mabel on 12-8-2008 at 7:15 am
I have this article. It’s Human Factors Engineering Studies
of the Design and Use of
Pushbutton Telephone Sets
By R. L. DEININGER, from The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol 39, No 4, July 1960, pp. 995-1012.
The author also discusses the results of tests on button size and spacing, force, travel and how people dial telephone numbers by referring back and remembering as they push the keys. It’s a very interesting paper.
posted by Peter on 12-8-2008 at 7:19 am
I have a Restoration Hardware Phone that has push buttons in the old rotary positions.
Looks great on my desk but I can’t dial it at all without starting over several times.
I guess some habits get burned in.
posted by Sean McMenemy on 12-8-2008 at 10:25 am
the bell exhibit @ the ‘64 world’s fair had a display of the new touchtone phones, allowing you to time how long it took to dial a number on it & the old rotary…great fun;-)
posted by airdrummer on 12-8-2008 at 12:44 pm
You can buy phones that look just like the old rotary dial phones (mimicking styles from candlestick through Princess) from Crosley Radio, but where the original dials had holes they now have pushbuttons. The numbers are in the original rotary pattern (more or less) but start just above the finger stop (where originally there was a blank space), which apparently creates enough extra room to add two button, so you wind up with 12 buttons in a circular pattern. How closely the arrangement replicates what you remember will probably depend in part on whether you had a GTE style phone or a Bell style phone (the finger stop was lower on the GTE phones).
Personally I would have preferred that they replicated the rotary dial pattern, although I grant that arrangement wouldn’t make much sense on today’s modern cell phones and such.
posted by Jack on 12-17-2008 at 5:46 pm