Electrographic is a term used for punched card and page scanning technology that allowed cards or pages marked with a
pencilA pencil is a writing or drawing device consisting of a slippery, thin stick of pigment and clay, usually encased in a thin wood cylinder, although paper and plastic sheaths are also used...
to be processed or converted into
punched cardsA punch card or punched card , is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
. That technology was sold by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
, its developer, under the term
mark senseElectrographic is a term used for punched card and page scanning technology that allowed cards or pages marked with a pencil to be processed or converted into punched cards. That technology was sold by IBM, its developer, under the term mark sense...
. A "mark sense pencil lead" sold by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
would meet federal specifications for "electrographic lead."
Mark sense was a trade name used by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
for electrographic forms and systems. It has since come to be used as a generic term for any technology allowing marks made using ordinary writing implements to be processed, encompassing both
optical mark recognitionOptical Mark Recognition is the process of capturing human-marked data from document forms such as surveys and tests.-OMR Background:...
and electrographic technology, because the user of a mark-sense form cannot generally tell if the marks are sensed electrically or optically. The term
mark sense is not generally used when referring to technology that distinguishes the shape of the mark; the general term
optical character recognitionOptical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-editable text....
is generally used when mark shapes are distinguished. Because the term mark-sense was originally a trade name, the Federal Government generally used the term electrographic.
In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, mark sense technology was widely used for applications like recording meter readings and recording long distance telephone calls. Many thousands of pencils were made expressly for mark sense applications by the
Dur-O-Lite Pencil CompanyThe Dur-O-Lite Pencil Company was a Chicago, Illinois, United States company that manufactured mechanical pencils from the 1920s into the 1990s. The company registered the "Dur-O-Lite" trademark in 1927. John P. Lynn was a founder of the company and was long associated with Dur-O-Lite...
and by the
Autopoint CompanyThe Autopoint Company was a manufacturer of pencils and desk top accessories in Chicago for about 50 years from the 1920s to around 1970. During that period Autopoint sold millions of pencils advertising companies large and small all over the country....
. Many of the pencils made for the "
Bell SystemWestern Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
" were stamped "MARK SENSE LEAD" and for the Federal Government, "US Government Electrographic."
Reynold JohnsonReynold "Rey" Johnson was an American inventor and computer pioneer. A long-time employee of IBM, Johnson is said to be the "father" of the disk drive...
was a teacher who set out to develop an automatic test scoring machine. The result of this work was the
IBM 805 Test Scoring MachineThe IBM 805 Test Scoring Machine was a machine sold by IBM beginning in 1937. The device scored answer sheets marked with special "mark sense" pencils...
.
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
hired Johnson as an engineer, and he went on to develop a range of electrographic mark-sense machinery. The first large-scale use of the IBM 805 was by the American Council on Education's Cooperative Test Service in 1936; In 1947, the Cooperative Test Service became the
Educational Testing ServiceEducational Testing Service , founded in 1947, located just outside Princeton, NJ, US, is the world's largest private educational testing and assessment nonprofit organization....
.
Various IBM equipment could be used with mark sense cards including the
IBM 513The IBM 513 Reproducing Punch was a card punching machine developed by IBM. The machine could perform these functions:* Reproducing all or part of the data on a deck of punched cards.* Gang punching -- copying punched information from a master card....
and
IBM 514The IBM 514 Reproducing Punch was a card punching machine developed by IBM. The 514 was announced in 1949, withdrawn in 1978. The machine could perform these functions:* Reproducing all or part of the data on a deck of punched cards....
Reproducing Punches, the
IBM 557The IBM 557 Alphabetic Interpreter allowed holes in punch cards to be interpreted and the Hollerith punch card characters printed on any row or column, selected by a control panel. The machine was a synchronous system where brushes would glide over a hole in a punch card and contact a brass...
Alphabetic Interpreter, and the
IBM 519The IBM 519 Electric Document Originating Machine, introduced in 1946, was the last in a series of unit record machines designed for automated production of punch cards...
Electric Document Originating Machine.
External links