Why is there no Q on the telephone dial?


	Why is there no Q on the telephone dial?

dewitte

8-31-2009 12:02 PM

137 views

tags:

q, dial, phone, digit

1 Comment |

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8-31-2009 12:10 PM

googleit

I have wondered that a time or 2 in my day. I guess I'm the wondering type. What gets me is why a calculator is opposite of a push button phone. It's almost as if they decided to screw with us? Just another way of filling our minds with meaningless crap.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/b9ec43cd-b0a6-419d-9c65-a1fc00a5bc3b/0D730215-0BB0-413C-A9C4-D7F54FEACDB6/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/351/why-is-there-no-q-on-the-telephone-dial" href="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/351/why-is-there-no-q-on-the-telephone-dial" style="font-size: 11px;">www.straightdope.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/351/why-is-there-no-q-on-the-telephone-dial">Phone company planners made a conscious decision to exclude Q the better part of a century ago and history has been proving they were geniuses ever since. It all started when the phone company began replacing human operators with mechanical switching equipment, which necessitated the use of dials. Bell wished to retain its folksy exchange names (since discontinued), but for reasons we'll get to in a moment elected to assign letters to only eight of the ten available digits. </blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/351/why-is-there-no-q-on-the-telephone-dial">The selection of the other came down to deciding which of the remaining 25 was the most useless, the principal candidates presumably being Q and X. </blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/351/why-is-there-no-q-on-the-telephone-dial">In any case, X was chosen for immortality while Q was consigned to the dustbin of telephony.
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