Why are the numbers on calculators and phones opposite? - Big Questions - (Ep. 31)

Hi, I'm Craig

I'm arranged in ascending order and this is Mental Floss on YouTube. Today I'm going to answer Alyssa Nitta's big question, why are keypads on phones arranged

in ascending order while keypads on calculators are the other way around? So what Alyssa is referring to here is how phones tend to have the 1, 2, and 3 buttons

in the top row, and calculators do the opposite. They have 7, 8, and 9 in the top row

We can't know for sure why this is, but we do know that both the phone and the calculator

keypads evolved from earlier versions of each technology. Then, the separate systems stuck before engineers had a chance to standardize one keypad, but

that's good. Good, come on guys, it's the 90s. Let's get started

So, in order to answer this question, order, get it? Order? I'm going to have to give you a little history

on the phone and the calculator. Rotary dial telephones were invented in the US during the early 1900s

The holes in the phone were numbered from one to nine in order with a zero after the nine

By the 60s, push button phones with a keypad that we know today had taken over. And some of those phones were shaped like pianos. Some

were shaped, were pink. For young girls. Because they were sexist back then

Before push button phones were officially released, studies were conducted to determine

what the most efficient keypad was. The goal was to find the best way to arrange numbers

so that there were as few errors in dialing as possible. For example, there was an article

published in a 1955 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology about this It stated that quote people arrange numbers and letters in the order in which they normally read At this point companies realized that there were so many possible combinations for button arrangement Well

yeah, there was 99999999999 many possible combinations. Well, actually, numbers couldn't repeat, so

it was actually less than that, but it was still a lot. While doing trials of push-button phones, they couldn't try all the different possible arrangements, so they tested out

combinations that made logical sense and ones that customers would expect. According to

A 1960 study conducted by Bell's lab, people preferred a design that involved two rows

of buttons that read horizontally. In early trials, people were able to dial those the

fastest with the least amount of mistakes, but companies went with the order that we still use today because they consider it to be the simplest and most efficient. Despite

the study. Later, in 1967, Texas Instruments made its first handheld calculator prototype

Unlike the phone keypad that was already in use, they installed buttons that had 7 through

9 in the top row. Because that's how they row. No, the pattern was inspired by desktop

top adding machines of the past. By this time the two separate systems were established

People got used to them and companies never saw reason to switch to a standard keypad pattern

If a company don't see a reason, it's not going to be in season

I tried to really force that rhyme there

Thank you