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A brief history of the numeric keypad
Picture the keypad of a telephone and calculator side by side. Can you see the subtle difference between the two without resorting to your smartphone? Don’t worry if you can’t recall the design. Most of us are so used to accepting the common interfaces that we tend to overlook the calculator’s inverted key sequence.
A reasonable answer could be tied to some mechanical decisions, possibly related to the method of complements and the fact that keys were pressing levers connected to rotating drums (Durant, 2011). The company tested 15 layouts, using odd-shaped diagonal, pyramidal, circular and horizontal arrangements and included formats found on existing devices such as calculators and punch card machines like the IBM Model 011. In fact, it’s quite interesting to notice that both Android and Apple iOS, in their early versions, used the phone keyset as the default interface when users were prompted to input numbers in a web text field (see screenshots below.
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