Hi I’m Craig, I'm arranged in ascending order, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube.
Today, I’m going to answer Alyssa Nitta’s big question, “Why are keypads on phones
arranged in ascending order while keypads on calculators are the other way around?”
So, what Alyssa is referring to here is how phones tend to have the 1, 2, and 3 buttons
in the top row. And calculators do the opposite -- they have 7, 8, and 9 in the top row. We
can’t know for sure why this is, but we do know that both the phone and the calculator
keypads evolved from earlier versions of each technology. Then, the separate systems stuck
before engineers had a chance to standardize one keypad. But that's good, diversity's good.
C'mon guys it's the 90's. Let’s get started!
So, in order to answer this question, order, get it? I’m going to have to give you a
little history of the phone and the calculator. Let’s start with the phone. Rotary-dial
telephones were invented in the U.S. during the early 1900s. The holes in the phone were
numbered from 1-9 (in order) with a zero after the nine. By the sixties, push-button phones
with the keypad that we know today had taken over. And some of those phones were shaped
like pianos some were pink for young girls. Because they were sexist back then.
Before push-button phones were officially released, studies were conducted to determine
what the most efficient keypad was. The goal was to find the best way to arrange numbers
so that there were as few errors in dialing as possible. For example, there was an article
published in a 1955 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology about this. It stated that,
quote, “People arrange numbers and letters in [the] order in which they normally read.”
At around this point, companies realized that there were so many possible combinations for
the button arrangement. Well yeah there was 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 many possible combinations.
Well actually numbers couldn't repeat so it was less than that, but it was still a lot
than that. While doing trials of push button phones, they couldn’t try all the different
possible arrangements. So, they tested out combinations that made logical sense and ones
that customers would expect.
According to a 1960 study conducted by Bells Lab, people preferred a design that involved
two rows of buttons that read horizontally. In early trials, people were able to dial
those the fastest with the least amount of mistakes. But, companies went with the order
that we still use today because they considered it to be the simplest and most efficient.
Despite the study.
Later, in 1967, Texas Instruments made its first handheld calculator prototype. Unlike
the phone keypad that was already in use, they installed buttons that had 7 through
9 in the top row. Cause that's how they roll. The pattern was inspired by desktop adding
machines of the past.
By this time, the two separate systems were established. People got used to them and companies
never saw a reason to switch to a standard keypad pattern. If company don't see a reason
it's not gunna be in season, I really forced that rhyme there.
Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube, which is made with the help of all these nice
people arranged in ascending order. If you have a Big Question of your own that you’d
like answered, leave it below in comments. Calc-U-Laterrrrr.