Data Processing - An Introduction

[Applause] for data more and more people are working at the processing of data yet the amount continues to grow and at a rate that makes it increasingly difficult to process especially by hand methods to reduce the effort and time required for many routine repetitive tasks various kinds of data processing machines have been developed such as the common typewriter many of these machines make use of electric power to help people do more with less effort where larger amounts of data need to be processed or where more complex operations must be performed more advanced sophisticated techniques are used many of these are based on the use of machines that process punched cards to use such a system data must first be translated from people language to machine language this is done by punching holes in each card punches and combinations of punches represent various numbers letters and special characters because the machine has a keyboard and punches cards it's known as a key punch learning to operate a key punch machine takes about as much time and skill as learning to be a good typist once the cards have been punched the data is in a form that can be processed by Machine this system has a number of advantages over hand methods consider the Sorting of data dividing one stack of data into many separate Stacks note how much faster this is than the Sorting of data by hand cating material by hand is another slow tedious process a great increase in speed and efficiency is brought about by the use of a cating machine it takes time for an operator to load two separate stacks of cards but once this is accomplished the machine takes over cards from the stack on the right and on the left are merged into a single new stack bringing related data together again this is much faster than could be done by hand methods still another data processing task that can be done automatically using punched cards is calculating it takes a while to set up the machine to do a particular computation but once readed the calculator can perform several different functions automatically first the calculator detects the punches electrically reading the numbers on each card next it multiplies these numbers or divides adds or subtracts them finally it punches the results on the very same cards the data came from again far faster than manual methods after the card calculating operations have been completed the data must be translated from machine language back to people language once again this can be done with the help of an accounting machine accounting machines print summaries of accounts charge statements bank statements and so on as with the other card processing machines a skilled operator is needed to prepare each job but the machine does the rest automatically again the work gets done much faster than could be done by hand punched card or unit record accounting procedures as they're called are fast flexible and reliable which helps explain why punched card equipment is widely used yet there are other data processing systems that are even faster and more adaptable we're referring to data processing using an electronic computer in looking at the parts of a computer system it's hard to see how it processes data because most everything takes place inside the equipment electronically we can get some insights though into how a computer processes data and advantages of computer equipment over unit record devices by comparing the two systems in a unit record that is in a punched card system data is recorded and stored on cards cards which must be moved through each of several different machines for data processing to occur cards must be physically moved from place to place in a unit record system but with a computer system data is stored electronically in a section of a computer known as its memory instead of moving cards back and forth all that is moved are impulses of electricity which flow through the computer at almost the speed of light punch card devices are limited by the manner in which they're controlled they're generally set up to perform a particular task by means of a wired board the particular wiring used is like a set of instructions telling the machine what operations to perform on the data additional boards can be wired in advance so there's a variety of instructions ready for use preparing a machine to perform a new set of operations involves rewiring a board or replacing one board with another each time the operation is changed the board or the wiring must be changed also a computer computer system though is set up so that thousands of different operations can be programmed beforehand and then stored internally within a computer's memory this way instructions can be made available at electronic speeds in thousands or millionths of a second a particular sequence of instructions used in a computer is known as a program programming a computer to do a particular job may require hours or even days of preparation one of the concerns of data processing is in getting data in and out of a computer people don't function on electronic impulses as computers do so intermediate devices are needed to communicate with a computer an electronic typewriter hooked into the processing unit is used mostly for testing a computer system another method of communicating with a computer is with punched cards the same kind kinds of cards we saw earlier the cards are fed into a card reader a device that converts punches on the cards into electrical impulses which can be directed to the computer's memory this is much faster than a typewriter but still very slow in terms of computer potential a more efficient method is to transfer the data from Punch Cards onto Magnetic Tape first this is done with the tape transport once data has been recorded on tape the same unit can be used to read the data from the tape into a computer at a much more rapid rate than could be done with cards directly data from over 100,000 cards can be recorded on a single tape similar to Magnetic Tape is the magnetic dis data can be recorded on or retrieved from magnetic discs even more rapidly than from tapes once data has been processed by a computer and recorded on disk or tape it may simply be stored in this form it may also be sent through the computer once again to a device known as a high-speed printer a unit that takes output from a computer and puts it in a form that people can read [Applause] other units for feeding data into and out of computers include Optical scanners paper tape punches and readers magnetic character recognition devices and many other units being developed every day such units may be located miles from the central processing section of a computer hooked up through phone wires or by radio waves this way a single computer system can serve distant parts of an organization or several different organizations simultaneously many of the jobs in the data processing industry have to do with operating the various types of equipment used in communicating with [Music] computers also needed are people who know how to program computers and prepare programs for processing various kinds of [Music] jobs still other people are needed to set up data processing systems such People Help management decide what jobs can best be done by machines they plan how these jobs should be done and they see to it that the work is actually [Music] accomplished data processing is a rapidly changing growing business reflecting the increasing need to process expanding amounts of [Music] data