RE: the article on why touch tone pads are the opposite of caluculator pads. Years ago I heard the story that the reason for the difference is that IBM owned the rights (copyright? patent?) on the calculator set up and that ATT would not pay the licensing fees, so they just inverted it. Even if it is a legend, I’m surprised that the article didn’t mention that one. ANyone else here this story or know anything about it?
That’s freakin’ ridiculous. Modern ten-key adding machines were made in the '30s by Remington-Rand, and subsequently copied by many companies. I’m not even sure that the layout CAN be patented or copyrighted, and it wouldn’t have been by IBM (has IBM ever made a calculator?).
ATT studied keyboard layouts and found out that the layout they use was easiest for users. They did ask adding machine manufacturers (Calculators? in 1963? Please.) about their layout, and no one had any idea how it got that way.
The idea is so freakin’ ridiculous that I’m glad Unca Cece didn’t sully his hands with it.
And a big freakin’ welcome to the boards! 
Welcome to the SDMB, j40bob. A link to the Staff Report is appreciated. Providing one can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mphonedial.html
Since this is a comment on a Staff Report and not on one of Cecil’s columns, I’ll move this thread to the appropriate forum.
Thanks for the welcome Attrayant. In response to the ugly flame reply from Nametag, do all replies come with this amount of hostility? My posting was humble and clearly stated that this was a story I hear and could not verify. It is not in any way ridiculous (even if it is wrong). The International Business Machine Company did indeed make calculators and adding machines and typewritters long before the computer age. Does anyone else out there have any factual information on this matter?
I didn’t see Nametag’s reply as being hostile… He was criticizing the idea, not you. Rest assured, direct attacks against another poster are very rare here, and when they do occur, the moderators take action. Ideas held by posters, however, are entirely fair game for criticism.
I remember hearing a long time ago that the reason that the touch tone phone was laid out differently was to slow down callers so that they would make fewer errors dialing wrong numbers. I also recall the article mentioning that the QWERTY keyboard was laid out for the same reason, to slow typists down so that keys wouldn’t stick as often.
Of course, I have no idea whether it’s true or not, but it’s one of those things that kinda sorta make sense.
Regarding typewriter keyboards, see Cecil’s column.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_248.html
Not so much to slow the typists, but to spread the frequently moving bits out to keep from jamming.
I thought the touch tone pads were available before tone dialing was. (Well, maybe not, but still…) Pulse dialing was in effect. A person who used adding machines all the time could hit the keys really fast, which would either confuse the pulsing or else make the tones follow more quickly than the phone switches could handle.
At least that’s what I’d heard…
So, not so much a matter of dialing accuracy as switching accuracy.
When Western Electric was developing the push-button phone, they commissioned a study, which determined that the “one-at-the-top” keypad was easier to use than the “nine-at-the-top” keypad. While “easier” does not necessarily mean “faster,” it probably is faster.
That’s why the telephone keypad is different; because it’s better for that purpose.
In the earliest days, before TouchTone was introduced, they experimented with buttons set in a circle like a dial, buttons set in two rows, etc. Check out this page.
At the time this was being done, cash registers and adding machines were not fully standardized, although the “nine-at-the-top” configuration seems to have been very popular.
Nametag, have you got a source or cite for your comments about the Western Electric study? My sources all indicated that there was no “testing” per se, but simply adaptation from the wheel dial to the touchpad with 1 at the top.
There are three versions of the basic story on this site, from ABC News, “How Stuff Works,” and Feldman’s “Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?”