why does a phone have alphabet on the buttons when we only use numbers?

why is it even there? what was the purpose?

When the telephone companies first allowed people to dial other people, it was all-digit dialing, with only three or four digit numbers.

Beginning in the 1920's, there were so many people with telephones in each city that they needed to make numbers longer, maybe four or five digits. When they got up to six digits, they didn't think people would easily remember sequences of numbers that were that long, so they created exchange names like "MUrray hill" or "PEnnsylvania", and asked people to dial just the numbers that corresponded to the first two letters of the exchange name when dialing someone's number. An example given in the Wikipedia entry for "telephone numbers" is "DUnkirk 0799".

It was just originally a way to help people remember numbers, and in many towns the telephone exchange names identified specific areas of the city.

Beginning in the 1960's in the US, the Bell System needed to free up more numbers within each numbering plan area ("area code") for use in seven-digit dialing, so they did away with the exchange names and went back to all-digit dialing, with seven-digit numbers. The letters on the phone are used for texting and entering names into the phone book. the letters r there for the 800 numbers that use their name for u to make it easier to remember their number. example 1800 eat food. then u just enter the number that has that letter on it. Because phone number used to include letters, for example people would say their phone number was "ATwater 80244" texing and putting ppl in yout buddylist thing duh Because back in the 40 and 50's we did use the Alphabet....

And it's becoming popular again....

1 888 282 RUSH

or

1 888 382 BECK

or

1800 352 EMPIRE

That's just off the top of my head too....

More memorable than the number.... My Mom referred to phone numbers as SA7-xxxx or BA3-xxxx.

I don't know where it came from though.

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