Data Processing with Unit Record Equipment in Iceland Óttar Kjartansson (Retired) Manager of Data Processing Department at Skýrr, Iceland
[email protected] Abstract. This paper presents an overview of the usage of unit record equipment and punched cards in Iceland and introduces some of the pioneers. The usage of punched cards as a media in file processing started 1949 and became the dominant machine readable media in Iceland until 1968. After that punched cards were still used as data entry media for a while but went completely out of use in 1982. Keywords: Data processing, unit record, punched card, Iceland. 1 Hagstofa Íslands Hagstofa Íslands (Statistical Bureau of Iceland) initiated the use of 80 column punched cards and unit record equipment in Iceland in the year 1949. The first ma- chinery consisted of tabulating machine of the type IBM 285 (handled numbers only), the associated key punch machines, verifiers, and a card sorter. See Figures 1 and 2. This equipment was primarily used to account for the import and export for Iceland. Skýrr (Skýrsluvélar ríkisins og Reykjavíkurborgar - The Icelandic State and Munici- pal Data Center) was established three years later by an initiative from Hagstofa Íslands, Rafmagnsveita Reykjavíkur (Reykjavík Electric Power Utility), and the Medical Director of Health of Iceland as was described in an earlier article [3]. Fig. 1. IBM 285 Electric Accounting Machine at Hagstofa Íslands year 1949 J. Impagliazzo, T. Järvi, and P. Paju (Eds.): HiNC 2, IFIP AICT 303, pp. 225–229, 2009. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2009 226 Ó. Kjartansson Fig. 2. Early form of the data registration using a punched card.