Re: Stop the bling, fergawdssake!

On 11/14/2011 10:15 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
> 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.
>
Sounds like another stupid choice made for mechanical limitations, like 
the Scholes keyboard.