Why do number dials on phones, remote controls etc go down in sequence whilst they go up on calculators?

Question

eg. phone
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
0

keyboard/calculator
7 8 9
4 5 6
1 2 3
0

Answer 1

Several are close, but none are exactly correct.

It is true that mechanical adding machines were the first "keyboards" of this type. Bookkeepers and accountants were used to using them. But since there were no pocket calculators or personal computers in those days, the average person was not used to using a 10-key pad.

So in the 1960s, when telephone companies were beginning to play with the idea of keypads to replace the old rotary dials on telephones, they did some research. They arranged the numbers the same as they were on the adding machines; they turned them around so that the "123" row was at the top; they put the numbers in a circular pattern, resembling the rotary dials; they tried several others. With each configuration they tried, they did tests to see how accurately people could enter phone numbers.

Remember, most people back then had never worked much with a 10-key pad--they did not have pocket calculators or personal computers. And what the researchers at Bell Laboratories found was that the arrangement found on our telephones was the arrangement that people could use most effectively--there were fewer misdialed numbers.

So the telephone is the one that went against the grain--but they did so based on good research (at the time).

Answer 2

Read most of the answers and agree with the most thought ones but, they all for got the basic. Phones and keyboard/calculators are two distinc pieces of technologies. When these two things were created the inventor did not think of integrating them but rather simply use them for its given purpose, calculators and numeric keypads to compute and phones to call people at a distance. So here's the answer, numeric keypads were made that way cause they should resemble calculator keypads whilst phone key pads resemble the number sequence to their predocesor, the analog dial which goes clockwise starting from 0 going to 9 which is why just like a clock the phone keypad goes, from the top, 1, 2, 3, and down to 9. Gets?! Simply put the calculator is like the numeric keypad as the clock is to the phone keypad.

Answer 3

All numbers on any keypad, I'm certain, would go up, like
7 8 9
4 5 6
1 2 3
0. The first keypads made were all like that.

Phones would have, too, when they went from rotary to touch-tone except for one thing: the letters that are represented on the digits:
1 2(ABC) 3(DEF)
4(GHI) 5(JKL) 6(MNO), and so on.
If the numbers on the telephone were in the same order as the then already accepted computer keypads, the letters would have appeared in a funky order.

Answer 4

Oooo, OOOO!! I know this one!!!!

OK the first devices to use number kepads were mechanical calculators. These were used by accountant type people and they got really good at using them - their fingers could tap out numbers like greased lightning.

Then along came telephones with keypads, but, unlike today's tone phones, they still used the old fashioned pulse dialling method. This meant that if you tapped out the number too fast the system couldn't cope and would miss numbers.

So, to slow down the accountant types and their flying fingers, the keypads on the phones were inverted to force them to stop and think about what they were doing, thus slowing down their typing.

Simple.

Answer 5

Those are used more often, and are closer to you. Makes them easier to hit without stretching further. (Trust me, used to do data entry. Zero, etc. are used a LOT more than 7, 8, 9.) So, ergonomically more sound in that order.

Answer 6

maybe for how much they think you will use them. like how the keyboard isnt in alphabetical order.

Answer 7

good answer