Keyboarding Equipment, Automated

machines designed to automate typing and logical processing of typed documents, which includes editing, proofreading, changing the format of the lines and pages of text, laying out of tables, and sorting information by assigned symbols.

Automated keyboarding equipment is used in editorial offices, business offices, technological and design bureaus at scientific research institutes, planning departments, accounting offices, and supply and marketing departments at industrial enterprises. The equipment is used either by itself or together with other equipment, as in the case of automated typing bureaus and computing bureaus for in-line data processing. The first automated keyboarding equipment appeared in the 1920’s and was used primarily for multiple reproductions of exact copies of the same text.

Automated keyboarding equipment may include a typing unit based on an electric typewriter, a device for recording information on a carrier (punched tape, magnetic tape, punched card, or magnetic card), a reader, and a unit to control the operation of the whole system. While the equipment may produce a typescript copy, it simultaneously produces an encoded record of the same document on a mechanical information carrier. The latter records not only the text and punctuation marks, but also the beginning and end of the line, the length of the line computed by number of characters, runovers, paragraphs, indentations, places set off by special type, and spacing between words and lines.

After the typed text is edited and proofread, the operator places the carrier with the coded recording of the document in the reader. Using the control console of the machine, the operator sets the first instruction from the program that the automated keyboarding equipment must follow so that the segments of text not requiring changes are typed automatically, and only additions and corrections are typed from the keyboard. Where the corrections or additions are extensive, the program is recorded beforehand on an information carrier; the operator sets the instruction for access to the program on the control console, and after that the process goes automatically. As a result the operator receives an edited, typed text and a new, corrected recording on the machine information carrier.

Where standard business documents are typed frequently, standard texts are recorded on information carriers and assigned identifying codes. Using these codes, the automated keyboarding equipment selects the required text and types it automatically, and the operator types in variable information directly from the keyboard. Tables and empty graph forms that are recorded beforehand on an information carrier are filled out in a similar manner.

The automated keyboarding equipment that appeared in the late 1960’s was more sophisticated in terms of functional capabilities. These more recent machines have libraries of standard programs for filling out forms, calculating tables, and selecting sets of data from a data file on the basis of assigned symbols. They also perform calculations and are able to interact with large-capacity memory units such as magnetic-disc units; in other words, they have changed from machines for automatic text proofreading and editing into information machines.