Posted
November 18, 2013
Before
my time, people used to make phone calls by asking operators to reach
a certain person or number. You couldn't make the call yourself!When I was a kid, we used to dial phone numbers ourself, but with a rotary dial. Finally, in the early 1940s an innovator named Henry Dryfus thought “outside of the box” and came up with a great idea: a push-button phone.
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| This was Dryfus's wooden model for his groundbreaking idea! |
On
this date in 1963, the first push-button phones were put on the
market.
I wonder if people lined up overnight for new release, like
they do with every iPhone. (I'm thinking not.)
What
were the benefits of push-button phones?
Well,
trust me, it's a lot faster to dial a number by pushing buttons. With
a rotary dial, you had to stick your finger in the right hole and
then rotate the dial all the way around to the dial-stop. It took a
lot longer for 9s and 0s to get the dial ALL THE WAY AROUND –
yikes! – that it took for 1s and 2s. So if someone had a phone
number with a lot of 9s and 0s (like I do! My phone number has three
9s and four 0s!), you'd almost rather change friends than go through
all that effort to dial that number!
Also,
along with the push buttons, we now had “Touch-Tone” phones with
a particular tone is associated with each button. So then we could do
all sorts of data entry using our keypads: you know, the whole “Dial
one for Spanish language” thing, the whole “Enter your account
number, followed by a pound sign” thing.
A
lot of modern phones now use the flat-touch-screen system that only
shows a picture of push buttons for us to press! And the beat goes
on....
Also
on this date:
Plan
Ahead:
Check out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
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