Re: Stop the bling, fergawdssake!

On 11/13/11 4:58 PM, Art Kocsis wrote:
> The layout of the touch-tone phone is completely OPPOSITE to the layout of
> a ten-key adding machine! The ten-key layout had been standard for decades
> and many people had committed it to muscle memory. The arbitrary reversal
> (just to be different?) has caused no end of pain and confusion. The IBM
> keyboard is another classic example of misguided change for changes' sake.

This may or may not be true, but somewhere in my history, I read or was 
told the change was intentional.

In those days, many phone switches were mechanical.  Someone with good 
10 key skills could tie those switches up in knots, as the switches 
could not keep up with the speed 10 key users could input a phone number.

Having watched one of those old switches in motion, it isn't hard for me 
to see someone inputting 3 or 4 digits for a phone number before the 
switch could process the first digit.

-- 
Ken

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