The problem with phones is the assignment of arbitrary digit strings rather than meaningful letter strings. That was not significantly technology-bound.
"Better" is subjective, but tech wise I dont think it would have been feasable (or economical) to have created 36 position rotary
switches at exchanges (26 letters + numbers) with the technology at the time. Nor do I think it would have made a better UI
to have a huge rotary or even pushbutton phone with so many letters. So instead they *did* use letters and early (even today)
phone "numbers" where often distributed as semi-meaningful letter strings but without the hassle of having to have a full AZ keyboard.
Hassle for both humans and machines. Numbers are indeed imperfect, but a good compromise for the time IMHO. And back 'in the day'
you only had to know a few digits ... anything more you just used the Voice UI (operator).
Plus the telco has an amazing predicate of backwards compatibility. They literally insist on 50+ years of backwards compatibility.
I personally think the whole system, and how it evolved over time, is quite ingenious. A UI that quite literally "my grandma could use"
without problems that spanned 100+ years of evolving technology. I have phones that are 80 years old that still work unchanged on the network, and one that
is 100 years old that required a minor upgrade (to get off of battery power and instead use exchange power). And it works. (But can answer only, not dial ... ha ha, it HAS no dial - yet it still works !)
That literally blows my mind.
----------------------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org
Cart
