11-18-1963 Bell Telephone Introduces Push Button Telephone
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Design Electrical Engineering Industrial Design Industrial Engineering Mechanical Engineering |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Community - Blog |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Alice Agogino |
| Description: | The Engineering Pathway's blog for November 18. Excerpt: Today in History - November 18, 1963 - Bell Telephone introduces push button telephone, eventually to replace the rotory dial telphone that had dominated the market since its invention in 1891 when Almon Strowger patented the twin inventions of the automatic telephone exchange and the pulse-driven telephone in the home. Although early prototypes had been built earlier by Bell Labs in 1941 (left-most image above) in a 302-style case with F1 handset with two rows of five keys on the front that plucked reeds to produce two tones for each digit. The design was shelved during World War II and forgotten until many years later after the transistor was developed and tones could be produced with electronic oscillators. Henry Dryfus, an industrial designer working for Bell Telphone, is credited with inventing the interface notion of the pushbutton, working as a consultant to Bell Telephone. One of the first protypes of the design was made of wood (second photo above) showing how early prototypes can be quite effective in communicating new concepts and getting customer feedback. The version that Bell Systems / Western Electric introduced in 1962 at a World's Fair in Seattle and as a commercial product on November 18, 1963 was based on this wooden model (third photograph above). They replaced the basic design language from a circle to square to visibly highlight the change from dial to pushbutton design. The concept was considered as the seed for revolutionary telecommunications concepts, such as the one pictured in the right-most image above for the videophone concept published as an advertisement in 1963. The �button� continues to be a winning design concept for telecommunication devices and is used in the recent introduction of a new generation of phones and advanced button designs inpsired by Apple Computers� iPhone. |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | pushbuttons push button design telephone design |
| Is Component of: |
"Today in History" Blog of the Engineering Pathway Digital Library |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(c) Design a system, component, or process |
| Use of Resource: |
Interesting case study in industrial design or history of technology. |
| Difficulty: |
Easy |
| Interactivity Level: |
Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | November 2008 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.k-grayengineeringeducation.com/blog/index.php/2011/11/ |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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