Telephone keypad

A telephone keypad is a keypad that appears on a "Touch Tone" telephone. It was standardised when the dual-tone multi-frequency system in the new push-button telephone was introduced in the 1960s, which gradually replaced the rotary dial. The invention of the keypad is attributed to John E. Karlin, an industrial psychologist at Bell Labs. The contemporary keypad is laid out in a 4×3 grid, although the original DTMF system in the new keypad had an additional column for four now-defunct menu selector keys. Most keypads have a star key or asterisk key on the bottom left and a hash key on the bottom right.

Key frequency

When used to dial a telephone number, pressing a single key will produce a dual-tone multi-frequency signaling pitch consisting of two simultaneous pure tone sinusoidal frequencies. The row in which the key appears determines the low frequency, and the column determines the high frequency. For example, pressing the '1' key will result in a sound composed of both a 697 and a 1209 hertz (Hz) tone.