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Newsgroups: fido.science
Distribution: fido
From: Michiel van der Vlist 
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 04 23:50:00 +0100
Subject: UV Index Details ?
Message-ID: 
References: 
Organization: Thou shalt not go faster than light.
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Hello Miles,

 > Hey - that's our back-bone here ...  and please be advised that NZ
 > has only just gotten clear of its last pulse-code dialling,
 > electromagnetic telephone exchange - whose rotary dials had
 > numbers running inverted (our 1's were the world's 9's!).

Interesting. So where was the zero located? I guess next to the 1, so that just
as it does here it actually generates 10 pulses.

People sometimes ask why the keyboards of calculators and telephones are
different.


  1  2  3        7  8  9
  4  5  6        4  5  6
  7  8  9        1  2  3
     0              0

  telephone      calculator


I always tell people this is because on a calculator the zero is the digit
preceding the one. On a telephone it is the digit that comes after the nine
because in telephony the zero is really 10 as the old dials generate 10 pulses
when dialling a zero. (Generating zero pulses is a tad difficult to discriminate
from doing nothing at all).

Your information however put it into a new light....


Cheers, Michiel