[PW] Re: A telephone question

[Brian Whatcott]

At 12:58 AM 5/27/2006,  John Franklin, you wrote:

>My great aunt asked me today, in passing, what the # and * keys on
>the telephone were originally "for". I know they are used in
>voicemail systems -- "At the tone, please leave a message for Mr.
>Nothere. Press pound when you are finished." -- but touch-tone phones
>were around before voicemail  ...
>
>-John Franklin


"The * sign is usually called "star" or "asterisk." The # sign, often
referred to as the "pound sign." is actually called an octothorpe.
Although many phone users have never used these digits - they are not,
after all, ordinarily used in dialing phone numbers - they are used for
  control purposes, phone answering machines, bringing up remote bases,
electronic banking, and repeater control. The one use of the octothorpe
that may be familiar occurs in dialing international calls from phones
  in the United States. After dialing the complete number, dialing the
  octothorpe lets the exchange know you've finished dialing.
It can now begin routing your call; without the octothorpe, it
would wait and "time out" before switching your call."

>From  <http://www.affordablephones.net/phonewarehouse/thedial.htm>

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"It was clear even in the late 1950s when DTMF was being developed that the
future of switching lay in electronic switches, as opposed to the mechanical
crossbar systems then in use. In this case pulse dialing made no 
sense at any point
in the circuit, and plans were made to roll DTMF out to end users as 
soon as possible.
  Various tests of the system occurred throughout the 1960s where DTMF
became known as Touch Tone.

"The Touch Tone system also introduced a standardized keyboard layout.
  After testing 18 different layouts, they eventually chose the one familiar
to us today, with 1 in the upper-left and 0 at the bottom. The adding-machine
layout, with 1 in the lower-left was also tried, but at that time few 
people used
  adding machines, and having the 1 at the "start" (in European 
language reading
  order) led to fewer typing errors. In retrospect, many people consider that
  this was a mistake. With the widespread introduction of computers and bank
machines, the phone keyboard has become "oddball", causing mistakes.

"The engineers had also envisioned phones being used to access computers,
  and surveyed a number of companies to see what they would need for this role.
  This led to the addition of the number sign (#) and star (*) keys, 
as well as a
group of keys for menu selection, A, B, C and D. In the end the lettered keys
were dropped from most phones, and it was many years before the # and *
  keys became widely used, primarily for certain vertical service codes such
as *67 to suppress caller ID. Many non-telephone applications still use the
  alphabetic keys, such as amateur radio repeater signaling and control

"Public payphones that accept credit cards use these additional codes
to send the information from the magnetic strip. "

 From <http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Telephone%20keypad>

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Brian Whatcott    Altus OK    Eureka!