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No, the 1-2-3 on the top appears to be due to an R. L. Deininger, 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?

Not true:
http://www.vcalc.net/Keyboard.htm

On a side note, back in my teens, I would make $5 for swapping the top and third rows of buttons on a standard WECO 25xx phone so that they matched an adding machine. The ladies in the office loved it.

Borrowed time perhaps, but then with old technology the number of interested people goes way down over time too.

The best objective indicator of scarcity is market price. Is there an obsolete technology that is worth more today than it cost originally, in inflation-adjusted dollars? Obviously some cars and comic books are "collectible" in this way. Any technology examples? What would somebody pay for a mint condition Apple ][, or an original arcade game console (Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, etc.)?

A case example would be the Curta mechanical calculator, which has become a hot collectors item due to its uniqueness and interesting history. They sold for $600 fifty years ago, and meanwhile inflation over this period has been around 7.5x. I don't believe these are worth $4,500 today, even in very good condition. Could there ever be a collectible technology, or does demand always fall off faster than the supply of working parts?

See this page http://www.vcalc.net/Keyboard.htm for why keypads are the reverse of phones. Basically it's because both phone and keypads are descended from earlier devices; keypads from mechanical calculators, which in turn were descended from cash registers which had the highest numbers on the top row, and phones from rotary dials.

A player called upsilandre used 610 magnetic switches, 500 wires, 430 pistons, and a variety of other objects to create a functioning calculator

That's a lotta parts. The Curta has only 605 parts and I thought that was complicated.

Imagine an object the size of a small desktop PC enclosure, entirely stuffed with mechanical linkages. It's truly astonishing.

Linkage: Extreme example. Cool example.

Sometimes, pictures are needed. :)

I have one of these posters. It looks pretty cool, and is mathematics-related:

As the owner of a 50-year slide rule that is still in great shape, I can say they are cool, at least. But what is even cooler (and a lot more expensive) is the Curta: http://www.webcom.com/calc/Curta_text.html and http://www.vcalc.net/disassy/ !

Well, it doesn't do grpahics, but I'd suggest the Curta. This device certainly has the coolest (= geekiest) UI.

One explanation is that it was intended to slow down adding-machine users, but that turns out to be unlikely: http://www.vcalc.net/Keyboard.htm Bell Labs did extensive testing when designing the telephone keypad and found the layout we've since become used to led to the fewest keying errors.

Keep in mind that this list was in Mobile PC magazine.

Quite true. But I'd consider an abacus to be a pretty damned effective mobile computing device. It's certainly a better mobile PC than, say, a taser.

Curta Mechanical Calculator
Moon Watch
IBM Model M Keyboard
K&E Decilon Slide Rule
HP-41 Programmable Calculator
Varian A-60 NMR
Electron Microscope

The Curta is definitely a very cool gadget, but since they're collector's items, the prices can be outrageously high.

Although the VCALC Curta Page mentions that most of the old Curta technicians who worked on the devices have made replicas at some point or other, nobody seems to be doing it today.

With the huge interest in them (since the Scientific American article), and the high prices, I'm very surprised that nobody's making low cost replicas. I'm sure lots of geeks who are more enamoured with the technology than the history would love to have a knock-off and the patents have probably long since expired.

That's OK, but for the man of the 50's on the go what do you do? You get a CURTA calculator. They were said to be popular with rally drivers for instance.

They are relatively valuable and pretty nifty calculator. You can try to get a feel for it with the simulator. Enjoy!

That's OK, but for the man of the 50's on the go what do you do? You get a CURTA calculator. They were said to be popular with rally drivers for instance.

They are relatively valuable and pretty nifty calculator. You can try to get a feel for it with the simulator. Enjoy!

The faster I ran on this thing, the faster my compile would go. I'd buy it.

Come on people! It wasn't that long ago that most computing devices were hand cranked. Take this example from the 1920s. Possibly the world's finest mechanical calculator, the Curta, was sold from 1947 to 1973.

About thirty years ago my father worked a summer job as a cashier in a liquor store. The cash register was electromechanical--under normal circumstances, it ran off ordinary wall current. This was a rural community and power outages were not uncommon. When the electricity was off, cashiers could crank a handle for each addition operation. My dad asserts that the mechanism was rather stiff, and a few hours of cranking through purchases was quite a workout.

Of course, if you really want a hand-cranked computer, you should talk to this guy.

"from that era?"
TI-83 was made in the 1996, actually. In fact, all TI-80, the first of the 80s series was made in 1995. None of that era calculators was a BCD calculator, none of them were four bit. See for yourself.
What era are you thinking of?