Fieldata

Fieldata was the name of a computer project carried out by the US Army Signal Corps in the 1950s to create standards for collecting and distributing information on a battlefield. In that sense, it can be viewed as a generalization of the US Air Force's SAGE system , which was created around the same time.

In contrast to SAGE , the intention with Fieldata was much broader because it should allow information to be gathered from different sources and formats. An important part of the Fieldata system was the specification of the format that the data should have. The result was a character set that was to have a major impact on the later ASCII character set. Fieldata also set message formats and even electrical standards to allow machines to be connected to the Fieldata properties.

Another part of the Fieldata project concerned the design and layout of computers of all kinds, from data acquisition terminals on the one hand to comprehensive data processing centers on the other. In the course of the project, some computers that correspond to the Fieldata standard were built, e.g. B. the transportable MOBIDIC from Sylvania and BASICPAC and LOGICPAC from Philco. ARTOC, another device, was designed for graphic output on slides , but was not completed.

Fieldata is the original character set of Univac's 1100 series computers , internally represented by one sixth of a 36-bit word on those machines.

The Fieldata project lasted from 1956 to 1962 when it was halted during reorganization efforts.

Fieldata character set

The Fieldata alphanumeric character set is as follows:

binary dec. octal character Surname 000 000 00 00 @ Master space 000 001 01 01 Capital letters 000 010 02 02 Lower case 000 011 03 03 ◊ Horizontal tab 000 100 04th 04 Carriage return 000 101 05 05 Δ Spaces 000 110 06th 06 A   000 111 07th 07 B   001 000 08th 10 C   001 001 09 11 D   001 010 10 12 E   001 011 11 13 F   001 100 12 14th G   001 101 13 15th H   001 110 14th 16 I   001 111 15th 17th J   010 000 16 20th K   010 001 17th 21st L   010 010 18th 22nd M   010 011 19th 23 N   010 100 20th 24 O   010 101 21st 25th P   010 110 22nd 26th Q   010 111 23 27 R   011 000 24 30th S   011 001 25th 31 T   011 010 26th 32 U   011 011 27 33 V   011 100 28 34 W   011 101 29 35 X   011 110 30th 36 Y   011 111 31 37 Z

binary dec. octal character Surname 100,000 32 40 )   100 001 33 41 −   100 010 34 42 +   100 011 35 43 <   100 100 36 44 =   100 101 37 45 >   100 110 38 46 &   100 111 39 47 $   101,000 40 50 *   101 001 41 51 (   101 010 42 52 "   101 011 43 53 :   101 100 44 54 ?   101 101 45 55 !   101 110 46 56 ,   101 111 47 57 ⊕ stop 110,000 48 60 0   110 001 49 61 1   110 010 50 62 2   110 011 51 63 3   110 100 52 64 4   110 101 53 65 5   110 110 54 66 6   110 111 55 67 7   111,000 56 70 8   111 001 57 71 9   111 010 58 72 '   111 011 59 73 ;   111 100 60 74 /   111 101 61 75 .   111 110 62 76 □ Special 111 111 63 77 Backspace

Individual evidence

1. ↑ WF Luebbert: Data Transmission Equipment Concepts for FIEL DATA . In: Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference . 1959, p. 196 , doi : 10.1145 / 1457838.1457872 ( digital copy ). Digitized version ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.