Comments on: 17 Pushbutton Configurations that Didn’t Make the Cut

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:46:00 +0000

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.

By: airdrummer

airdrummer — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:44:00 +0000

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;-)

By: Sean McMenemy

Sean McMenemy — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:25:00 +0000

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.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:19:00 +0000

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.

By: Mabel

Mabel — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:15:00 +0000

“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.

By: Susan

Susan — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 04:17:00 +0000

“dialing”… much the way I chuckled when my friend said he was “filming” from his digital camera.

By: Tenmile

Tenmile — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 03:51:00 +0000

Hmmmmm…IB reminds me of something…just can’t put my finger on it.

By: Karl

Karl — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 22:49:00 +0000

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.

By: Simon

Simon — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:26:00 +0000

Thank god they chose a 3×3 grid, otherwise the invention of cellphones would have necessitated the creation of a third layout pattern.

By: Heather

Heather — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:39:00 +0000

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!”