Slashdot Mirror
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."
I want to know if they are his fault. It's annoying to have phones different from everything else that has a keypad.
Kudos
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
While excavating anthropological sites in Auschwitz, rusty canteens from the Great Recession were found five feet below the surface. The logos on those canteens? "the FDA." Everything we've been told about the past is a lie.
In the year that it happened, the Anthrax scare didn't receive nearly as much media attention as it should have. the FDA's censors were probably behind this.
Outspoken academics who research this topic have had their research silenced by those in power.
Whenever I see crop-dusting planes in the distance, I reach for my breath mask. There's way too much evidence that it's not a farmer behind the controls of that plane, but an agent of the FDA-- and that he's not dropping pesticides, but compounds genetically engineered to cause mad cow disease.
In 2009, a prominent Harvard professor was forced to resign after talking about fluorine's role in cases of mad cow disease.
You can find subtle references to this in a number of official documents, but government red-tape makes sure that most of those documents are all but inaccessible to ordinary people.
The only way for upstanding citizens to protect themselves from this madness is to retreat from modern society entirely.
And you thought Steve Jobs was cool.
Seriously? How does this have ANYTHING to do with Apple or Jobs? Why does every other story on here have to include some sort of strange mental gymnastics to make a reference to a dead CEO? Get Steve's decomposing cock out of your mouth and stop trying to tie everything to him or his fucking company!
Woody Allen's piece on the invention of the sandwich ("Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?" in "Getting Even")
I shall mourn his loss.
He was also the Father of the User Interface. He was the first to take human factors into consideration in the design or products.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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 screw-up by 'reversing' sometimes on the computer keypad. It's a scar.
But cheers John Karlin. I'm sure you did your best with a difficult choice.
I'm sure all digital dialing had its problems and not everyone thought it was cool either. It probably was more beneficial though than anything Steve "invented".
According to TFA a Bell Labs engineer named Mallina patented a touchtone layout years before anyone else had even thought about the problem, only it was two rows of five buttons (1-5 above 6-0), which was eventually rejected by Karlin's group.
I think I'd actually prefer the two row layout in terms of dialing speed, although there would be a question of fit with today's phones.
Doesn't the phone company charge an extra fee for digital dialing? As if it's still costing them extra?
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.
Don't tell me: John Karlin and the Touch-Tones.
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.
Kid-proof tablet..
The system with higher numbers on top goes back to the Roman and Chinese abacus, so it's not arbitrary at all.
Gee, I can smell it already. Are you suggesting it's again all the way back to width of the Horse Arse !
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://dmdb.org/lyrics/freberg.underground.html#A4
Alas, I couldn't find a site with an actual audio recording of it--the tune was as funny as the lyrics.
When I was a kid, we had, gasp, a party line. You didn't even need to dial
to hear a conversation. Ah, the good ol' days.
No, I didn't.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The 70s called
And you thought Steve Jobs was cool to the touch
FTFY
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 is doing lately?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
If it weren't for him, Jenny's Phone Number might have been "UNion 75309".
Doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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 for voicemail. Even if it wasn't worth spending a few extra seconds a day to save a few extra cents a day, it was worth it to us to deny the phone company those ill-gotten cents.
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
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
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
My Dad also refused to pay extra for touch tone, and I also thought it was a ridiculous fee after everything was computerized.
I'm not sure when they stopped charging (early 90's, maybe?), but now it's no longer a line item. And my parents have touch tone service.
When I was in gradeschool this song came out: the Let's All Call Up AT&T and Protest to the President March:
I was too young at the time to understand what it was about, but it is amusing now.
Here in Canada it was the same situation. $3 extra a month for touch-tone dialing from Bell. My parents refused to pay. At some point maybe in the late 90's new accounts were forced to be touch-tone, but you still had to pay the extra $3. It just was no longer a line item in the bill, tricky bastards.
Older accounts like ours were exempted from the forced switch. And until I ported the number to VoIP last year we were still saving on that $3 every month.
Now they pay $2 a month for a DID number service from voip.ms. Take that Bell Canada.
Between VoIP for your landlines, digital terrestrial channels for TV, Netflix, 3rd party ISPs like Teksavvy and Wind Mobile for cell phones there *is* a path to freedom from the communication oligopolies that run Canada.
I guess I'm not getting the point of that strip. I've never run into a residential or cellular voice mail system that requires DTMF interaction to leave a message. If anything it's "press 1 or stay on the line". Which modern voice mail system is it satirizing?
It was found that telephone numbers could be remembered better if the exchange was last. If you look up a number, the exchange is likely to be a familiar number, one of maybe ten, while the other four digits are essentially new to you. You have a better chance of remembering the number long enough to dial it if the unfamiliar part comes first. Never implemented, probably because the nature of stepping relays made it impractical.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
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.
The Touch Tone system may have been offered to private subscribers in 1963, but the 1962 World's Fair was serviced by a Touch Tone switch brought in especially for the event. All the payphones in the fairgrounds were Touch Tone.
You know what pisses me off?
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 certainly won't care if it isn't.
So annoying.