Route Reference Computer: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:47, 6 November 2009

Revision as of 18:14, 6 November 2009

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Although the mail sorting machine was eventually broken up for scrap, it was highly influential outside of Canada. Lewis' original suggestion that some sort of invisible or see-through ink be used to store routing information on the front face of the letters is now practically universal, as is the basic workflow of the address being converted to [[bar code]] form as soon as possible by typists and then sent into automated machinery for actual sorting.<ref>"Mail-sorting system reads typed addresses", ''Electronics'', Volume 51 (1978), pg. 61</ref><ref>"Mail Sorting", ''Product Engineering'', Volume 39 (1968), pg. 67</ref> Use of bar-coded ZIP codes printed directly at the sending point when using [[postage meter]]s became mandatory in the U.S. in 1973.<ref>"Code of Federal regulations", U.S. Federal Register Division, 1974, pg. 191</ref> During the 1960s the use of [[optical character reader]]s replaced typists for letters with typewritten addresses, and in the 1990s, handwriten ones as well.

Ferranti prospered from the develpmentdevelopment effort as they adapted their new transistorized circuit design for a series of follow-on projects. Shortly after the Route Reference Computer was delivered, they were contacted by the [[Federal Reserve Bank]] to develop a similar system for check sorting that was very successful.<ref>Ball & Vardalas, pg. 243</ref> Ferranti later the same basic system as the basis of [[ReserVec]], a [[computer reservations system]] built for [[Trans Canada Airlines]] (today's [[Air Canada]]) that started full operation in October 1961, beating the more famous [[SABRE]]. The basic ReserVec design would later be generalized into the [[Ferranti-Packard 6000]] [[mainframe]] business computers, whose design became the basis for the [[ICT 1900]] series of machines during the 1960s.<ref>Dornian, pg. 40</ref>

==See also==