Phones and calculator keypads

[Dudley]

Can anyone explain why the keypads for telephones and calculators are the opposite way round? i.e. phones from the top down being 123 etc and calculators start with 789 at the top. As many of us use both in our working lives it would make sense for them to be the same.I often hit the wrong key because of this. Is there some technical reason? p.s. I now see that this question was posed back in 2002 but no satisfactory answer was given.

                   

[spudqueen]

Telephone key pads are English, computer keypads are American. About 17 years ago when I was temping I once had to use a very old computer with an English keyboard, which was very confusing as I was working in finance at the time and used to touch type numbers in. Not that day I can tell you!

[Pinotage]

I don't think 'English & American' is a valid answer; America had phone keypads long before we did.

Computer number pads are based on the keypads of mechanical calculators; I don't know why they had their low value numbers at the bottom, but I assume it they were more commonly entered (?) and they could rest their wrist on the desk, and use low numbers to enter high numbers instead of raising their hand to hit a higher numbre; e.g. hitting 4 twice instead of moving up to hit 8.

The people who operated these mechanical calculating machines were sometimes known as 'computers' because they computed.

Telephones had no connection with calculators, there was no need to have a commonality, and they internationally decided the phone pad layout as it is today.

If the computer key pad order irritates, it should be possible to re-assign the values so they match your requirments.

[rojash]

I've been working with computers since 1979 and I've never seen one of any nationality with an 'upside-down' numeric pad as described by spudqueen