John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way To All-Digit Dialing, Dies At 94

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."

Comments

upside down keypads?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[stevedog]

Although it wasn't based on research, it actually is fairly intuitive. 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. My guess is that that served as the anchor, with the other numbers logically flowing from there.

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?

[arth1]

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?

[Dan East]

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).

Re:upside down keypads?

[BlackThorne_DK]

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...

Re:upside down keypads?

[rpstrong]

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 could see the buttons that were pressed, confirming the price before hitting enter.
    - An accounting clerk had more need for a 'heads down' entry system.

[I was such a clerk, I was once blazing fast on the 10-key, and I was always annoyed by the 'upside down' phone layout.]

First "user interface" with any smarts

[Animats]

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 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 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.

Re:Cool part: 50+ years later, ur still charged ex

[adolf]

Doesn't the phone company charge an extra fee for digital dialing? As if it's still costing them extra?

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.

Re:Steve Jobs????

[YttriumOxide]

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 I want" kind of guy. I admire that in business leaders in the technical world.

He appeared to truly want things to be better for people. He probably didn't achieve that and definitely lost sight of some important aspects of "better" in his later years; but desire is what should be measured for the mettle of a man, not results. So, I still give him the benefit of the doubt - he wanted things to be better, and he tried really hard to achieve that result. That's something that I personally find pretty cool.

(although I'd rather swap my toilet paper for sand paper than be forced to use an iPhone or iPad as my daily mobile computing device - so you can hardly call me an Apple fan)

But you are right that this comment has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic.