Ask Slashdot: Calculators With 1-2-3 Number Pads? 393
dotancohen writes "Although the telephone has the 1-2-3 key on the top row, most calculators and keyboards have 7-8-9 on the top row. Switching between the two destroys muscle- and spatial- memory. Do any slashdotters use a scientific calculator with 1-2-3 on the top row? I've already scraped and resoldered my Casio fx-82 calculator to have 1-2-3 on the top, and remapped the numpad in Kubuntu, but if there exist any calculators like this already on the market, I'd buy two."
Re:Its the phone company that caused the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Gimme a break (Score:3, Interesting)
It is not difficult to "rememberize" 10-key layout versus reverse 10-key. This "feat" is well within the capabilities of subhumans who live in flyover territory, much less elite geeks who can get their questions approved on slashdot.org. I had no problem with it myself, back when I worked for a phone company and had to switch back and forth between the IBM-PC 10-key pad and the telephone reverse 10-key. The mouthbreathers I worked with picked it up after a few weeks.
Actually, now that I think about it, what's the big deal? Any uber-geek should be able to adjust to these circumstances quite quickly. And honestly: times aren't like they were years ago when I had to dial 50 phone numbers per day, and enter 50 results into the computer. Who the hell, in this day and age, sits down next to a "push-button" landline telephone and keys in the numbers for his friends? We all use mobile phones these days, it's all in the phone book. In the last...five, ten years? I've had to use my 31337 ten-key skillz exactly...zero times. When you meet a new person, you just punch in their number once: either by soft keyboard (iPhone) or by 1234567890 above qwertyuiop (one of those old-fashioned "blackberry" phones).
Oh, I think I see. On the submitter's web page [dotancohen.com], we can see the following bit of sublime insight:
Yeah, he's an idiot.
Something of interest (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2019/why-do-telephone-keypads-count-from-the-top-down-while-calculators-count-from-the-bottom-up [straightdope.com]
The story begins back in pre-calculator days, when there were cash registers. We're not talking cash registers that scan, but mechanical things where you actually had to push the keys hard to punch numbers. The cash registers were designed with 0 at the bottom, and the numbers going up. Why did cash registers choose this organization? I was unable to find any clear answer. These were the days before customer surveys and mass marketing opinion polls. The people who designed cash registers evidently just thought it was the obvious approach--lowest numbers at the bottom, highest numbers at the top.
In fact, the earliest cash registers had multiple keys. You didn't enter 7 and 9 and 5 for $7.95; there was a separate column of keys for each decimal place. Think of a matrix, with the bottom row of 0's, next a row of 1's, then a row of 2's, going up. The right hand column would represent single units (cents), the next column for tens, then hundreds, etc. So, to enter $7.95, you'd actually enter 700, then 90, then 5.
When calculators made their appearance, they copied the cash register format. In fact, some of the earliest mechanical calculators (ah, how my wife loved her Friden!) had multiple columns, like the cash register. The earliest calculators had keypads that were ten rows high and generally 8 or 9 columns across.
When hand-held and electronic calculators made their appearance, they copied the keypad arrangement of the existing calculators--0 at the bottom, 1-2-3 in the next row, 4-5-6 in the next row, and 7-8-9 in the top row, from left to right. So, basically, they evolved from the cash register.
The Touch-Tone phone emerged in the early 1960s. Before that, there were rotary dials, with the numbers starting at 1 at the top right and then running counterclockwise around the dial to 8-9-0 across the bottom. Why would "0" be on the bottom? Probably because the dialing mechanism was pulse, not tone. Since they couldn't do zero pulses for 0, they did ten pulses, and hence put the 0 at the end. (Thanks to Radu Serban for this suggestion.)
There seem to be three reasons that the Touch-Tone phone keypad was designed as it was:
(1) Tradition. People were used to dialing with 1-2-3 on top, and it seemed reasonable to keep it that way.
(2) AT&T (the only phone company at the time) did some research that concluded there were fewer dialing errors with the 1-2-3 on top (possibly related to the traditional rotary dial layout).
(3) Phone numbers years ago used alphabetic prefixes for the exchange (BUtterfield 8, etc.). In the days of rotary dials, no doubt it seemed logical to put the letters in alphabetical order, and to associate them with numbers in numerical order. The number 1 was set aside for "flag" functions, so ABC went with 2, DEF with 3, and so on. When Touch-Tone phones came in, keeping the alphabet in alphabetical order meant putting 1-2-3 at the top.
So there we have it. Basically, calculator keypad design evolved from cash registers, while telephone keypad design evolved from the rotary dial. Tradition has kept them that way ever since.
Re:Don't you have anything better to do? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the whole thread has gone into ridicule, let me defend myself (OP):
I use Anki [ankisrs.net] to learn and memorize facts. When memorizing phone numbers and the like, I type them in so that Anki can check my answer. Then when I get to the phone I find that my muscle-memory is not only useless, it is actually a hindrance.
I have no problem operating either type of device, but the dichotomy puts up barriers where there could be bridges. When you need to remember a phone number, do you not mentally punch it into an imaginary phone? That spatial-memory device won't work if you sometimes type the number on a 1-2-3 keypad and other times on a 7-8-9 keypad.
I know that there are those of us who like to learn, and therefore use efficient memory techniques, and that there are those who ridicule those of us who learn. On a website for geeks, I had expected to find the former, not the latter.
Re:Don't you have anything better to do? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another post covered this material, but you should realize that geeks hate spatial memory and systems that use spatial memory. This is the community that embraces vi and hated Classic Mac OS... do the math.
Re:Touch-Tone with three fingers (Score:4, Interesting)