John Elias Karlin (February 28, 1918 – January 28, 2013) was an industrial psychologist and a pioneer in

human factors engineering Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Four primary goals of human factors learnin ...

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

of AT&T. The son of grocers, Karlin was born in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

, South Africa. He studied at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

, earning a bachelor's degrees in music, philosophy, and psychology, and a master's in psychology. At the same time he was a violinist with the local symphony orchestra and string quartet. He later moved to the United States, earning a PhD from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

and studying electrical engineering at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Karlin conducted research on psychoacoustics for the United States military. He joined Bell Labs afterwards, becoming their first staff psychologist. He successfully argued for the foundation of its Human Factors Engineering Department in 1947, and was promoted to directorship of the unit in 1951. He undertook numerous empirical research projects, such as the usability of numerical input systems and the human capacity to recall digit sequences. The development of the modern telephone keypad is attributed to research in the 1950s in the department,B.L. Hanson, ''A Brief History of Applied Behavioral Science at Bell Laboratories'', Bell System Technical Journal 62(6) 1571–1590 (July–August 1983), p.1578 which was influential in many other applications. Around 1960, his research resulted in the transformation of the

telephone numbering plan A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, re ...

in use in North America from the use of

telephone exchange names A telephone exchange name or central office name was a distinguishing and memorable name assigned to a central office. It identified the switching system to which a telephone was connected, and facilitated the connection of telephone calls betwee ...

to all-number calling (ANC) to provide essential expansion of the pool of available

telephone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

s. Karlin was married twice, and had two children, one of whom predeceased him, and three stepchildren.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Karlin, John Elias 1918 births 2013 deaths University of Chicago alumni University of Cape Town alumni Scientists at Bell Labs South African emigrants to the United States