Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!uhnix1!nuchat!sugar!karl
From: karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Message-ID: <3381@sugar.uu.net>
Date: 3 Feb 89 13:03:04 GMT
References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <532@geovision.UUCP> <4575@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM> <319@itcatl.UUCP>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX
Lines: 21

In article <319@itcatl.UUCP>, jonathan@itcatl.UUCP (Jonathan Peterson) writes:
> Is it true that the phone company designed touch-tone keyboards upside-
> down from calcutaor, etc numeric keypads because data entry people could 
> punch faster than the first generation switching systems could read?

Not according to an exhibit I saw at the Museum of Science and Industry
in Chicago (someone in this group probably has access to a Bell Systems
Technical Journal article on this matter, a much more definitive source),
they laid out the touchtone keypad after a lot of research to find out
what worked best for people.  They had even tried a triangular configuration, 
as in:
	1
       2 3
      4 5 6
     7 8 9 0


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