[HN Gopher] A brief history of the numeric keypad
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A brief history of the numeric keypad
Author : ThomPete
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-05-08 20:04 UTC (3 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.doc.cc)
| card_zero wrote:
| > Picture the keypad of a telephone and calculator side by side.
| Can you see the subtle difference between the two without
| resorting to your smartphone? Don't worry if you can't recall the
| design.
|
| Pfft, I have both on the table beside me. I live in a different
| timeline, I suppose.
| tmtvl wrote:
| What subtle difference? On a telephone the numbers are in a
| circle, whereas on a calculator they're in a square. They're
| completely different.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| I noticed ATM keypad in different countries use 1-2-3 or 7-8-9, I
| have yet to figure out if this is based on something, it seems
| fairly inconsistent with language/history/colonialism
| throwup238 wrote:
| 7-8-9 is the "standard" for calculator keypads but Bell Labs
| (supposedly) did some research and found 1-2-3 was more
| intuitive for users when designing the touch tone telephone
| keypads. When ATMs were being designed, manufacturers in the
| US/Canada/Europe emulated the telephone keypad while
| manufacturers in Asia emulated the calculator keypad.
| signal11 wrote:
| These days you can get PIN-capable card-readers with
| touchscreens. Some of these models _randomize_ the button
| layout, which can be interesting to those who rely on muscle
| memory to type their PIN. Especially given that some shops
| have the readers physically attached or secured, so you have
| to type the PIN at an odd angle.
|
| Some examples here[1].
|
| [1] https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/144937/why-do-
| some-ne...
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| As I was briefly a beneficiary of SNAP EBT ("Food Stamps")
| I was subjected to the process of managing that debit card.
| When checking out, for example from Walmart.com, a popup
| would appear so that the user can input his PIN.
|
| The popup was served by the SNAP EBT provider, and it would
| randomize the PIN number pad. So indeed, you couldn't rely
| on muscle memory to input your PIN because the number pad
| changed every time input was requested. It seemed that the
| mouse was also required for this input, rather than the
| keyboard.
| userbinator wrote:
| Relatedly, TV remote controls seem to have settled on the
| telephone layout with 1 in the top left.
|
| I have also used a few kiosks with a keyboard that has its
| physical keys arranged in alphabetical order, which is just as
| confusing.
| rmccue wrote:
| Seems reasonable to have the most frequently used numbers close
| to the user; I wonder if there might be something of Benfold's
| law involved, where lower digits are more frequently used.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| That's my intuition. I spent a lot of time entering stacks of
| checks into 10-key calculators at my family's businesses
| growing up in the late 80s and mid-90s. Most entry used the
| bottom two rows of digits (the zero, double-zero, and 1-3)-- a
| lot of $10, $20, and $30 checks.
| abanana wrote:
| A line early on in the article caught my eye:
|
| _> they serve the same functional goal -- input numbers_
|
| Well, yes and no. Same as how, when it comes to data types, it
| often has to be pointed out to inexperienced developers that a
| phone "number" isn't a _number_ in the mathematical sense - you
| can 't add or multiply 2 of them together to get anything
| meaningful. It's an identifying string, that happens to use only
| digit characters. "123" in a telephone number is three individual
| unrelated digits, whereas "123" in a calculator represents the
| number one hundred and twenty-three.
|
| So the functional goal isn't exactly the same. One is entering
| individual characters, but on the other you're more likely to be
| thinking "one hundred and twenty-three" as you type its digits.
|
| It may or may not be related to the actual reason for the
| inversion of layout, but the subtle difference felt like a
| (possibly minor) error in the initial premise.
| ztetranz wrote:
| It's sounds silly when the Android auto in my car reads a text
| message. "Message from twenty four thousand, five hundred and
| thirty nine ..."
| tekla wrote:
| > Picture the keypad of a telephone and calculator side by side.
| Can you see the subtle difference between the two without
| resorting to your smartphone?
|
| I sometimes wonder if people have ever used Excel to calculate
| anything ever
| wtallis wrote:
| It's possible that at this point, a majority of the people who
| have ever used Excel to calculate anything have done so on a
| laptop that doesn't even have a numeric keypad. Certainly, that
| fraction of the cumulative historical Excel user base has been
| growing.
| cduzz wrote:
| I worked for a couple summers as a "relay operator"; in the USA
| there is (was? give the hateful time I suppose...) a law,
| "Americans with Disabilities Act" to the effect that people
| unable to do a thing should be able to do the thing. Roughly it
| means "people in wheelchairs should be able to access buildings"
| and "people unable to see should be able to read newspapers" and
| "people unable to hear should be able to talk on the telephone."
| and so on.
|
| The "let people unable to hear talk on the phone" accommodation
| was to provide actual teletype machines to people who can't hear
| (at the time, many of these devices were some hideous 75 baud 6
| bit monsters where there were limited punctuation and only upper
| case); the phone company would then also run a service where they
| had operators (I was one, for a couple summers) where people
| would call this service and that service would act as a bridge
| (or, "relay") to the other kind of device. So deaf people could
| order pizza, teenagers could call their friends and talk about
| teenager stuff, etc.
|
| Specific to this conversation, the "relay operator" setup was a
| telephone system billing computer (that would also setup the
| phone call) and a standard terminal that'd interface with the
| person with the TTY. There were 2 800 numbers; one to connect to
| a TTY and one to connect to my ears; people would connect and ask
| to talk to a peer, and I'd enter the billing / call info into the
| phone computer, then actually do the talking on the terminal.
|
| Each of these systems had a very distinct keyboard (the phone co
| keyboard had deep wells on the home keys; the terminal had
| "normal" nubs on the home keys), and I spent a ton of time
| entering phone numbers on the phone co's billing computer, with
| my right hand. To this day, my right hand touch-types "phone
| company" numbers and normal "ten key" (I did a lot of data entry
| at other points in my life) with my left hand.
|
| [edit]
|
| oh -- these things, though "ttys" were called "TDD" or "TTD" or
| some silly name to imply they were for deaf people, though they
| were just ttys; the cooler kids, calling that relay number, had
| 300 or 1200 or even 2400bps modems; I think that's as fast as the
| phoneco's relay terminal went, though)
|
| GA
| crazygringo wrote:
| The article doesn't make it explicit, but from the facts it
| presents it seems like the fundamental difference between the
| numeric keypad and telephone keypad is:
|
| - With the numeric keypad, you want an extra-large 0 at the
| _bottom_ that can be operated with your thumb, because zeros are
| so disproportionately common in real-life numbers like prices.
| And smaller numbers are used more than larger numbers, so you put
| the smaller numbers closer to the 0 so you have to reach the
| least, and wind up with 7-8-9 at the _top_.
|
| - With dialing phone numbers, zeros _aren 't_ more frequent -- in
| fact they're _less_ because phone numbers can 't start with them
| (in the US). For local numbers, all digits 1-9 are used with
| approximately equal frequency. So the keypad starts with a
| natural numeric order of 1-2-3 at the top in reading order, and
| puts 0 at the bottom since it feels weird to start counting with
| zero (just like QWERTY keyboards start with 1, and puts 0 after
| 9), and because it has the special function of calling the
| operator.
|
| So there seems to be an actual logic to it.
| gitroom wrote:
| Man, reading all this makes my brain itch, I still mess up on ATM
| keypads if the layout flips. You think people just adapt even if
| it never makes sense, or does frustration actually change design
| over time?
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(page generated 2025-05-11 23:01 UTC)