Why don't old telephones have the letters Q or Z on them?

Question

Why don't old telephones have the letters Q or Z on them?

Answer 1

Because Q is too much like a 0 and Z is too much like a 2.

Answer 2

The plan was to have letters for the numbers 2-9. 1 and 0 never had letters associated with them. With eight numbers and three letters per number, you can use 24 of the letters. So, there are two extra. "Q" looks like "O" and "Z" looks like "2" and these two letters are not common in English. So, it was decided to leave these two out to avoid confusion. Note that "I" used even though it looks like "1" because I is a very common letter.

Answer 3

Actually old telephone dials did have Q and Z on them.  They were removed around the early 1940's when the new standard was adopted.

See: http://www.dialabc.com/motion/keypads.ht...

Answer 4

Because of confusion, people accidentally press the wrong key and make wrong phone calls.