Fieldata

Fieldata

Fieldata was a pioneering computer project run by the US Army Signal Corps in the late 1950s that intended to create a single standard for collecting and distributing battlefield information. In this respect it could be thought of as a generalization of the US Air Force's SAGE system that was being created at about the same time.

Unlike SAGE, Fieldata was intended to be much larger in scope, allowing information to be gathered from any number of sources and forms. Much of the Fieldata system was the specifications for the format the data would take, leading to a character set that would be a huge influence on ASCII a few years later. Fieldata also specified the message formats and even the electrical standards for connecting Fieldata-standard machines together.

Another part of the Fieldata project was the design and construction of computers at several different scales, from data-input terminals at one end, to theatre-wide data processing centers at the other. Several Fieldata-standard computers were built during the lifetime of the project, including the transportable MOBIDIC from Sylvania, and the BASICPAC and LOGICPAC from Philco. Another system, ARTOC, was intended to provide graphical output (in the form of photographic slides), but was never completed.

Because Fieldata did not specify codes for interconnection and data transmission control, different systems used different control functions. Intercommunication between them was difficult (Mackenzie, 64).

Fieldata is the original character set used internally in UNIVAC computers of the 1100 series, represented by the sixth of the 36-bit word of that computer. The direct successor to the UNIVAC 1100 is the Unisys 2200 series computers, which use Fieldata to this day (although ASCII is now also common with each character encoded in 1/4 of a word, or 9 bits).

The Fieldata project ran from 1956 until it was stopped during a reorganization in 1962.

Fieldata characters

References

*
* [http://wps.com/projects/codes/FIELDATA/index.html Article by W.F. Leubbert, 1960] Accessed 25 September 2008.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Fieldata — hieß ein vom US Army Signal Corps in den 1950er Jahren durchgeführtes Computerprojekt, das Standards für das Sammeln und Verteilen von Informationen auf einem Schlachtfeld schaffen sollte. In diesem Sinne kann es als eine Verallgemeinerung des… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • MOBIDIC — Sylvania s MOBIDIC, short for MOBIle DIgital Computer , was a transistorized computer intended to store, sort and route information as one part of the US Army s Fieldata concept. Fieldata aimed to automate the distribution of battlefield data of… …   Wikipedia

  • Шестибитная кодировка — Шестибитные кодировки применялись в компьютерах, производившихся в США в 1950 х 1960 х годах. Соответственно размер машинного слова на этих компьютерах был кратен 6 бит (например, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, 60 бит). Такой размер символа позволял… …   Википедия

  • Sixbit — refers to various character codes designed for use on computers with word lengths a multiple of 6. There are 64 possible codes, so sixbit codes generally include only the upper case letters, the numerals, a collection of punctuation characters,… …   Wikipedia

  • UNIVAC 1100 — Die UNIVAC 1100/2200 Serie ist ein 36 bit Computersystem welches ursprünglich von Sperry hergestellt wurde. Heute übernimmt Unisys den Support der Systeme. Die UNIVAC Großrechnerserie wurde als Clearpath IX weitergeführt. Die UNIVAC 1100 Serie… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • UNIVAC 2200 — Die UNIVAC 1100/2200 Serie ist ein 36 bit Computersystem welches ursprünglich von Sperry hergestellt wurde. Heute übernimmt Unisys den Support der Systeme. Die UNIVAC Großrechnerserie wurde als Clearpath IX weitergeführt. Die UNIVAC 1100 Serie… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), pronEng|ˈæski [ [http://www.m w.com/cgi bin/audio.pl?ascii001.wav=ASCII Audio pronunciation for ASCII] . Merriam Webster . Accessed 2008 04 14.] is a character encoding based on the… …   Wikipedia

  • Byte — A byte (pronounced bite , IPAEng|baɪt) is the basic unit of measurement of information storage in computer science. In many computer architectures it is a unit of memory addressing, most often consisting of eight bits. A byte is one of the basic… …   Wikipedia

  • Baudot code — The Baudot code, invented by Émile Baudot,[1] is a character set predating EBCDIC and ASCII. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No 2 (ITA2), the teleprinter code in use until the advent of ASCII. Each character in the… …   Wikipedia

  • Computing — For the formal concept of computation, see computation. For the magazine, see Computing (magazine). For the scientific journal, see Computing (journal). A difference engine: computing the solution to a polynomial function …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”