Fieldata

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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.

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

Binary	Decimal	Octal	Glyph	Name
000 000	0	00	@	MasterSpace
000 001	1	01	[
000 010	2	02	]
000 011	3	03	#
000 100	4	04	Δ	Delta
000 101	5	05		Blank
000 110	6	06	A
000 111	7	07	B
001 000	8	10	C
001 001	9	11	D
001 010	10	12	E
001 011	11	13	F
001 100	12	14	G
001 101	13	15	H
001 110	14	16	I
001 111	15	17	J
010 000	16	20	K
010 001	17	21	L
010 010	18	22	M
010 011	19	23	N
010 100	20	24	O
010 101	21	25	P
010 110	22	26	Q
010 111	23	27	R
011 000	24	30	S
011 001	25	31	T
011 010	26	32	U
011 011	27	33	V
011 100	28	34	W
011 101	29	35	X
011 110	30	36	Y
011 111	31	37	Z

Binary	Decimal	Octal	Glyph	Name
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
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	¤	Lozenge
111 111	63	77	≠

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Last updated on Wednesday August 22, 2007 at 10:32:26 PDT (GMT -0700)
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