John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way To All-Digit Dialing, Dies At 94 120
First time accepted submitter g01d4 writes "Who was John E. Karlin? 'He was the one who introduced the notion that behavioral sciences could answer some questions about telephone design,' according to Ed Israelski, an engineer who worked under Mr. Karlin at Bell Labs in the 1970s. And you thought Steve Jobs was cool. An interesting obituary in the NYT."
upside down keypads? (Score:2, Interesting)
I want to know if they are his fault. It's annoying to have phones different from everything else that has a keypad.
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:4, Informative)
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The fail was that the analysis was done in a time when calculating machines were a speciality item few people were familiar with.
I would think that a sizable part of the population had operated a cash register or elevator, even in 1960.
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:5, Informative)
The only type of machine that had a 7-8-9 keypad was the ten-key machine, used by bookkeepers and accountants to total receipts.
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No, but they had the higher numbers higher up, which is the significant difference between phone pads and other pads.
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Note the distinct lack of a 3x3 grid of numbers 1 through 9, because these cash registers were mechanical not digital.
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10-key adding machines were also mechanical. I pulled one apart once; it had a series of flexible springs held between two plastic plates which translated the keypress to a series of wheels. The plate would move sideways with each keypress in order to engage the wheel for the next digit.
I suspect that that the cash registers didn't change over as quickly for several reasons, including:
- A cash register didn't have as much need to be as compact as a desk calculator.
- The clerk
Re:Old cash registers? (Score:1)
Those old registers reminded me of the first one that I used, an NCR (National Cash Register) that was already old for its time. The data plate called out the required power: Zero to 120 volts, zero to 60 cycles. And if the power failed, you could stick a crank in the side.
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Unfortunately the proliferation of letters on keypads (a lot of countries did not have them) in recent years have made 1-2-3 more prevalent.
Fortunately, the proliferation of touch screen smartphones puts you into the position to choose what you want.
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Supposedly it is calculator keyboards that are upside down. Two reasons touch tone phones use the order they do:
Touch tone phones replaced rotary phones, which already had 123 at the top of the dial, and 789 at the bottom. So it made sense to keep the same order that millions of people were already used to, in order to make the transition easier.
Touch tone phones have the alphabet sharing the keys, starting with ABC on key 2. Thus the letters are alphabetic from top to bottom, which also properly follows reading order.
Apparently no real research was done in the choice of calculator keyboards having the numbers descending from 9 down. It just happened, and since calculator keyboard layout was more arbitrary (it had neither a predecessor like touch tone phones, nor the alphabet sharing the keys), it would have made sense for calculator designers to match the touch tone phone layout.
I don't know if any studies have been done, but I don't see any reason why one layout would be more intuitive than the other for pure numerical use to a human than the other. It's whatever you get used to. If calculators matched telephones from the beginning then today no one would feel something was inherently wrong with their calculator or that it is upside down from what it should have always been.
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, all of this is coming out of my ass, but like I said, I don't think it's entirely illogical (though I also think that, for its own purpose, the phone's layout is equally logical, and emulating the calculator on a dialpad would have made the phone look ridiculous when it was released).
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:5, Interesting)
The system with higher numbers on top goes back to the Roman and Chinese abacus, so it's not arbitrary at all.
Also, push button elevators naturally had the higher floors higher up, so there was precedence for this system with push buttons.
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:5, Funny)
Are you telling me that the Romans and the Chinese are responsible for big-endian ordering?
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Are you telling me that the Romans and the Chinese are responsible for big-endian ordering?
Since they invented the computer, yes.
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"Given that calculators were probably most commonly used in finance initially, I would guess that the most common number used (possibly even now) would be 0. Placing that most common number at the thumb position has clear utility, similar to that of the spacebar."
To expound on this a bit, the design is not arbitrary. In finance digits don't actually occur with equal frequency. 1s are far more common than 9s for example. See Benford's Law [wikipedia.org] for more info. Its used in forensic accounting to help detect coo
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorta, kinda accurate.
The main reason actually relates to the position of the zero. On a rotary phone, the numbers go 7-8-9-0 (phone phreaks should know that dialing 0 generates 10 pulses - just like 1-9 generate 1-9 pulses, respectively).
On an adding machine and other such hardware, the zero is actually beside the 1-2-3. As at the time the numbers were in a vertical column, you'd see them as 0-1-2-3 ... -8-9.
So when they went to the key pad, the phone engineers decided that since the 0 was besides the 9 on every phone they made, it should stay close to the 9 on the final phone layout. Hence 1-2-3 on top, 7-8-9 on the bottom, and *-0-# on the bottom. (Or on old keypads, 0 aligned with either the 8 or 9).
LIkewise, calculator engineers saw that people who used adding machines expect the 0 to be near the 1-2-3, so they designed their keypads with that in mind as adding machine users expected 0 to be near 1.
And look at your keyboard to this day - the number row reflects the telephone layout (1-2-3 ... -7-8-9-0) while the numeric keypad reflects the calculator layout. Presumably, this was because the typewriter guys saw that the telephone kept the 0 near the 9 so they kept their 0 near the 9 as well (being that more people would've seen a phone at the time than a calculator. I'm certain back in the late 19th century when keyboards weren't standardized on QWERTY and the phone was for rich folks, they probably had 0-1-2-3 just as often as 1-2-3..-9-0.
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You have an unbalanced parenthesis. You will be terminated shortly. Resistance is futile.
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"So when they went to the key pad, the phone engineers decided that since the 0 was besides the 9 on every phone they made, it should stay close to the 9 on the final phone layout. Hence 1-2-3 on top, 7-8-9 on the bottom, and *-0-# on the bottom. (Or on old keypads, 0 aligned with either the 8 or 9)."
Sorta, kinda inaccurate. The phone engineers did not make the decision, the behavioral engineers (led by Mr. Karlin) did. And they made their decision based on testing; people were simply faster with the 1-2-
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Touch tone phones have the alphabet sharing the keys, starting with ABC on key 2. Thus the letters are alphabetic from top to bottom, which also properly follows reading order.
Touch tone phones were only following the pattern already long established by rotary phones - those had the same letters associated with the same digits.
As a matter of fact, when I was a kid our phone numbers were usually stated with the first two digits being replaced by letters - so you might've said "my number is LE5-4192" for instance. That first bit indicated which exchange you were on, and was probably a hold-over from when operators had to manually make the connections.
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Having just two letters that represented the digits was just a transition from manual operators to a step-switch. Back when, people knew the name of their central office... for example, mine was Carriage Acres, plus a 5 digit number (95985). Shortly before we got that number, many only had three digit numbers -- Carriage Acres plus a 3 digit. When they started moving towards automated switching, they replaced our phones with the notifier (arm that you cranked) with phones that had the rotary dial and the
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They should make a Dvorak keypad, with the most commonly used number in the middle.
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Re:upside down keypads? (Score:5, Informative)
No, the 1-2-3 on the top appears to be due to an R. L. Deininger [vcalc.net], and probably some Bell execs who figured (npi) that it would look better with ABC at the top instead of PRS.
What Mr. Deininger didn't realize was that the industries that already used keypads with higher numbers at the top weren't likely to change.
Calculators started out with 900, 90 and 9 at the top, and going down to 0 at the bottom. Later digital calculators continued with the high numbers at the top, because that's what calculators (the human ones) were used to. So 7-8-9 went at the top.
Similar for cash registers, which really were just narrow purpose calculators, but here there was also a mechanical reason. Registers popped up plaques with the numbers for the customer to see. The designs varied, but generally these were slotted in order from 0-9, with the 0 and 1 closest to the customer, to prevent fraud where the customer would see (and pay) a higher sum that what was entered. Having the low numbers at the bottom meant fewer mechanical crossings.
Then there's the elevator industry. Buildings in general go upwards, not downwards, and placing the top floors, i.e. high numbers at the top was natural.
So there were at least three examples of higher numbers at the top which Bell ignored.
What bothers me is that ATMs also appear to have 1-2-3 at the top. I cannot get this to make any kind of sense, as they're used to enter sums, not mnemonics.
Did AT&T perhaps "help" design early ATMs?
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:5, Interesting)
Never really noticed before, but you're right about ATM machines. The millions of POS terminals out there also match telephone keypads with 123 at the top. Guess it makes a little sense. You would enter your PIN into your phone when checking balance via a call to automated support, but you wouldn't ever type your PIN into a calculator. So at least you will always be entering your PIN on the same style keyboard (not counting computer keyboard numeric pads, but I really don't think the average person enters enough numbers to even bother using the numeric keypad on a computer - it would be interesting to see a study showing if the typical person even uses it at all).
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Azerty sucks for anything requiring punctuation, i.e. most programming languages & CLIs.
I can't do the angle brackets on one without taking my shoes off.
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Not in Shanghai - the ATM keypad at the airport terminal has 789 at the top, like a computer keyboard. Couldn't understand at first why it kept saying "wrong PIN number". Got it on the third attempt (luckily!)
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In Denmark they actually reversed it a few years back, with all the horrors of people not remembering or mistyped their PIN number.
Before it was in the Calculator style, with 789 at the top, now all terminals are with 123 at the top, phone style...
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Meanwhile here in Japan they randomize the keys on the touch screen for security
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Interesting... how do blind people use the ATMs there?
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The braille dots move around when it randomizes the keypad? How do they do that then?
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I've driven my (then) girlfriend to the ATM, and her being blind, she would sit behind me and operate the ATM through the window. Thanks to the moron who put Braille and a voice option on it.
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The costs involved in tracking & managing different types compared to simply having them all identical would far outweigh the cents that an embossed plate costs.
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Yes! - I remember that!
I were among those that discovered that the rubber keypad on the "Danmark" phones could be cut and the wires to the rows could be switched (individual wires), so we simply cut up the keypad in three rows, switched the wires for the top and 3rd row and voila! - We had the old ordering back.
Re:upside down keypads? (Score:4, Informative)
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Did AT&T perhaps "help" design early ATMs?
Yes - most ATMs are made by NCR which, like IBM, have had a long relationsship with AT&T - even an aqusition and spin-off
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The author would like to thank J. E. Karlin for his advice in conducting the latter phases of the program and in writing this report.
Re: upside down keypads? (Score:1)
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The letters were already associated with those numbers, and were part of how the dialing system worked (since US phone numbers used to consist of both letters and numbers). Your suggestion would've caused untold chaos.
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Last line of the article, apt on many levels:
“How does it feel,” his inquisitor asked, “to be the most hated man in America?”
In fairness to Mr. Karlin, he figured out what "ordinary people" could handle, and the target of "ordinary person" has moved.
Insight (Score:2)
Kudos
CC.
Done right (Score:2)
Western Electric took their time and engineered a marvel of function. Too bad nobody bothered to save the tooling for those things.
A lot more engineering effort nowadays is rightly focused on the extremely profitable control of product life cycles.
I wonder what sort of volume Unicomp [pckeyboard.com] is doing lately?
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Unicomp seems to be well off, Wikipedia: "Recently, Unicomp has begun expanding their product line. Due to customer demand showing that this was no longer a special request, Unicomp now sells beige, black, and colored key caps, with printing and without. In addition, Unicomp sells replacement parts for older IBM/Lexmark keyboards, and will repair just about any keyboard manufactured by themselves, IBM, or Lexmark." (emphasis mine)
No wonder if you are based on the Model M (I own two, both from the beginning
As a life long Phone Phreaker . . . (Score:1)
I shall mourn his loss.
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whistle a mournful tune
Arguably.... (Score:4, Insightful)
He was also the Father of the User Interface. He was the first to take human factors into consideration in the design or products.
First "user interface" with any smarts (Score:5, Interesting)
He was also the Father of the User Interface. He was the first to take human factors into consideration in the design or products.
No, that goes back at least to the Gilbreths. Frank Gilbreth created time and motion study for industrial work. His wife, Lillian Gilbreth [wikipedia.org] was more on the product side. She is responsible, among other things, for kitchens with long continuous counter space with cooking surfaces and sinks at the same level.
The first "intelligent user interface" is hard to pinpoint. Railroad interlocking control boards were close. They prevented the operator from doing anything that would cause a collision (that's why they're called interlockings) but didn't help set up routes. The General Railway Signal NX system [nycsubway.org] in 1936 was probably the first automatic intelligent user interface. Routes were set up by pressing a button to indicate where a train was going to enter the controlled area. Lights on a track model board would then light up indicating all the places it could exit. The operator would select one, push one exit button, and all the switches and signals for the route would be set accordingly. The control system took into account all trains present, and all routes already set up, so only safe routes could be set. The operator could even set track or switches out of service and the system would route trains around the area of trouble.
Obligatory xkcd (Score:2)
The 70s called [xkcd.com]
Press 1 or stay on the line (Score:2)
So it's his fault (Score:1)
I've worked jobs with nine-button phones and with mechanical / electro-mechanical calculators.
Mostly, you'd take a breath and reset internally to make the swap. And hopefully notice not too many taps past the inevitable reversals. While cursing whoeverinhell didn't follow the established international keypad convention with the new phones.
It's not like calculators were exotic. Sure nobody had them at home, but a hell of a lot of people used them at work. Basic kit of all clerical work everywhere.
I still scr
Cool part: 50+ years later, ur still charged extra (Score:3)
Doesn't the phone company charge an extra fee for digital dialing? As if it's still costing them extra?
Re:Cool part: 50+ years later, ur still charged ex (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid, we had a variety of telephones in the house. Some hung on the wall, some had dials, and some had buttons. In the beginning, all of the phones (including those with buttons) used pulse dialing. I remember two distinct conversations between my parents regarding this issue, the first from sometime in the 80s and the second in the early 90s:
1. "Should we pay for Touch-Tone(tm) service?" "It's expensive. We already pay too much for phone service." "It's only a couple of dollars a month, and we can dial faster."
And so it was. We had Touch-Tone(tm), and life was really neither better nor worse, just different. It was a line-item on the bill until
2. "They want to sell us call waiting and three-way calling and distinctive ring services, all bundled up. Can we use those?" "Maybe. Then the kids would have their own phone numbers."
And so it was. With the change of service, the Touch-Tone(tm) item dropped off, though I remember my dad calling to order package and insisting upon it being that way...
And as an adult, I've never been billed for it. And these days, I don't have a land line at all. Come to think of it, it's been years since I've used a real phone that actually used DTMF itself: It's always either a digital office phone, some incarnation of VOIP, or a cell phone.
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My father refused to pay extra for touch tone, and never did. They kept charging extra long after it was all computerized and there was no more specialized hardware listening for clicks on the company side.
Don't know about today, but about 5 years ago my old house only had rotary-enabled service, so we would dial to renew prescriptions and then switch he button to touch tone.
Oh, it's better than that. (Score:2)
Pulse dialing actually cost the phone company more for a long time, as I understand it, because it kept the switching circuitry busy longer than tone dialing. But they'd won the right to charge extra for tone dialing, and the more people shifted to tone dialing (for its obvious benefits), the more money they could get.
My wife and I were also holdouts, keeping our cheap electronic phones set to pulse-dial (hit "speed dial 8", then wait for the clickety-clicking to finish), switching to tone-dial as needed fo
Professional Violinist? (Score:3)
Obligatory Freberg (Score:2)
http://dmdb.org/lyrics/freberg.underground.html#A4 [dmdb.org]
Alas, I couldn't find a site with an actual audio recording of it--the tune was as funny as the lyrics.
"And you thought Steve Jobs was cool." (Score:2)
No, I didn't.
Jenny's phone number (Score:1)
If it weren't for him, Jenny's Phone Number might have been "UNion 75309".
Doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
How the Rhinoscerous Got All His Digits (Score:5, Funny)
When we were growing up on our little island in the Caribbean we could just pick up the 'phone --- and yes, oh best beloved, in those days an apostrophe would typically precede the word phone --- we'd dial five digits. And the call would just go through.
Not seven, not ten. Never eleven! It is so obvious looking back, the seconds we saved by not dialing those unnecessary digits stretched into minutes, hours, days... by 1980 we were wandering, listless, the burden of those extra hours weighed heavily on us. Many would gaze at their telephones, silently pleading for some sign or answer. But the phones were silent too --- with so much accrued time it was pointless, there was nothing left to say, all had been said.
Then one day a visitor came ashore and asked the number for such-and-such. While dialing the five digits they remarked, "We dial seven. This would not work where I come from."
What an disturbing idea! Ripples of amusement and shock passed through our small society. 'Phones began to ring once again as people mulled this concept. It was unsettling, the idea that should we venture too far from home those familiar numbers we use to communicate would simply not work!
But how far was too far, we wondered? In whispers at first. For now it was possible there was some unknown, invisible boundary surrounding us. For our safety and that of our children it must be mapped. So we asked for volunteers... and sent them out to neighboring islands at all points of the compass, and the US mainland --- and waited by our 'phones.
We sighed with relief when the first reports came in from adjacent islands. Five digits, all clear!
But then our worst fears were confirmed. From Puerto Rico, nothing. From The United States, nothing. We never heard from those brave souls again. Time accrued and the days became longer still.
Then one day a village idiot --- the same who had once suggested we borrow a lug nut from each of the other wheels --- wondered that maybe there are really seven digits... but two of them are somehow invisible. A digits of the land and one of the sky he said, that are unknown to us because we live on and breathe them unaware.
I was intrigued by this idea. What would those digits be? How could one discover them? There are only a hundred possibilities. We all were amused by this but I was perhaps the first one who actually started dialing through them. That is when I discovered that 'phones are patient. Unlike all the people I knew, my 'phone did not seem to mind if I repeatedly dialled numbers that did not work. I had found a new friend!
It is hard to describe what happens after a lifetime of complacent acceptance, as one applies barely an hour of concentrated effort towards some insane idea -- only to reach a moment where you break through and the world changes forever. The call went through and my friend picked up and I heard a familliar 'Hello?' For In those days, oh best beloved, when we answered our 'phone we always said "Hello." We did not bark or grunt, and especially not the impolite "...yes?" or "what the fuck now??" of today.
I shouted breathlessly "I am speaking to you from SEVEN DIGITS! SEVEN! Can you hear me??" Sure, he said, I don't think he knew what I meant and it was past midnight anyway. Being a scientist or explorer of uncharted waters is a heady responsibility. I circled and underlined the two amazing digits and proceeded to complete the sweep. The next combination yielded nothing, and the next. Finally --- the last.
Only one circled pair of digits on my worksheet. I had concieved a simple experiment of technology that was bound to an existential question, performed an exploratory experiment and had obtained a clear and astounding result. We were all saved, we could dial seven digits now like everyone else... and all our time would be spent dialing --- glorious dialing!
I hugged my 'phone.
And in days to come I would discover that dialling a leading '1' forced long distance trunking to occur (Why are these local numbe
Another study (Score:3)
Damn 1- (Score:2)
To dial long distance, I have to dial "1-" first (which is OK, since I don't want to call LD by accident). But if I do dial "1-" and then a number that isn't long distance,
it says "BEE-BEE-BEEP Your call can not be put through as dialed. Please dial again."
Knowing what is long distance and what isn't is very complicated around here. If I start the number with "1-" it means "I don't care if the number is long distance".
If I don't care that the number is long distance, I ce
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Well, Steve Jobs invented the phone after all.
I know it's funny, but someone modded it as "Informative"! (as at 1014 hrs GMT) Is there a way here of modding a mod as "funny"?
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Re:Steve Jobs???? (Score:4, Funny)
When I got my second cell phone in 2007, I also switched from T-Mobile to Sprint. I narrowed down my choices to the Motorola RAZR or ic502, both clamshell models. The deciding factor: the RAZR didn't have a raised dot on the 5 key, so I got the ic502.
I hated that phone every minute of the next three and a half years.
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If it makes you feel any better, you probably would have hated the RAZR, too. All but the very last GSM model had shit reception and its wasn't that hot either. They were awkward to hold because of their thin-ness and the battery life was crap, maybe half of triplets.
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But we know Karlin was cool
Karlin was cool? Sounds like a jerk to me.
1) Got numeric keys the wrong way up
2) Shortens co-workers phone leads in the middle of the night until they complained loud enough for him to hear. They might have been irritated long before that point, and how would they necessarily know to complain to him. Could he not have confined the experiment to his own phone? Co-incidentally, yesterday I rigged a cord for an overhead bathroom switch. It only took a minute to fix an optimum length by trying it, a
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1) Got numeric keys the wrong way up
I don't know how you count in your country, but we count from 1 to 9 without any jumping back from 9 to 4 or from 6 to one.
Which happens to be the order of keys on a telephone. Repeat after me: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
You probably shouldn't have watched Sesame Street episodes out of order... :-)
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.... but not the order of keys on a calculator or a full PC keyboard. Se elsewhere in this discussion for why this is. .
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.... but not the order of keys on a calculator or a full PC keyboard. Se elsewhere in this discussion for why this is. .
Yes, but the key order on a calculator is the wrong one as it is NOT going straight from 1 to 9. Yes, there were reasons why they put them in a different order, but that does not automatically makes that the right order.
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6) Shortened phone leads from 3 ft, which sounds long. However in the 1950/60s office phones were quite scarce and often shared between several people. Desks were placed face-to-face in pairs or groups of four to share a phone, in which case that 3 ft was all needed, and more. But, Karlin worked in a phone company office, where no doubt phones were all over the place and that fact does not seem to have occurred to him.
I have worked with people like Karlin. The same sort of busy-bodies
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5) He thought that to go electronic and/or to extend the srange, the dial code needed to be all digits. Why? The old alpha characters were already translated into digits, so why couldn't buttons do the same?
FTFA : "telephone exchanges that spelled pronounceable words were starting to be exhausted. All-digit dialing would create a cache of new phone numbers". Who said they had to be pronouncable? My postcode (zip code to Americans?) and most others are not pronouncable (eg mine starts "NP
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4) Believed that people can remember a 7-digit number - they can't, unless it is one they use regularly
Really? - Numbers here in Denmark are 8-digit and I remember most of the numbers in my contact list and often dial them directly instead of using the contact list.
Oh, and US numbers are actually 10-digit, but for most local and semi-local calls the 3-digit area code can be omitted.
We used to have the same kind of area codes in Denmark (6-digit numbers and 2-digit area codes that could be omitted on local calls) but about 20 years ago it was decided to throw away the disposable area codes and merge them with
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4) Believed that people can remember a 7-digit number - they can't, unless it is one they use regularly
What other seven-digit numbers would you need to remember?
Any number, like the plumber's, that you have just looked up in a directory or got off the Web needs to be transferred to the phone pad. Perhaps I'm retarded, but I cannot do that without glancing back at the number part way through.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_plus_or_minus_two [wikipedia.org]
You're retarded, but you're in good company. Unless I can compress it some way I can't do 6 reliably.
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No-one thinks Steve Jobs is cool, except the douchiest of Apple fanatics. He wore sneakers and jeans and black turtleneck. That is not cool.
Actually, as a non Apple fanatic; I thought he was pretty cool. Went a bit too far in his later years though.
I think far too many people think of him only in his "hip" later years, showing off the latest iGadget to crowds of adoring fans then heading back to Apple and being a "hard taskmaster" to the developers. They then retroactively apply this personality to his earlier years and assume he was always a douche. By all accounts he was a bit of a revolutionary back then; a "fuck the system, I'll do what
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I think far too many people think of him only in his "hip" later years, showing off the latest iGadget to crowds of adoring fans then heading back to Apple and being a "hard taskmaster" to the developers. They then retroactively apply this personality to his earlier years and assume he was always a douche.
But some people have read folklore.org and the Tao of Mac and we know that he was always a douche.
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No-one thinks Steve Jobs is cool .... He wore sneakers and jeans and black turtleneck. That is not cool.
Hey, steady on, sneakers and jeans and black turtleneck were cool (in 1963).
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'...sneakers and jeans and black turtleneck were cool (in 1963).'
No, they weren't.
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10th doctor - sneakers. Jobs was 33% cool.
You've also just described what I was wearing frequently in 63 (at 9 years old) so thanks, I think.
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The only way for upstanding citizens to protect themselves from this madness is to retreat from modern society entirely.
You could start by cutting your Internet connection.
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Somebody spends too much time studying at the feet of Master Jeff Rense. [rense.com]
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Heh. I wasn't even alive when that change was made; I still heard that song as a kid and was amused by it, even if its context was relegated to "historical curiosity".