What Are the Different Types of Transcription Equipment?

A data preparation device is an offline device used to collect and organize data before it is entered into a computer. There are two methods for data entry. One is direct input, such as manual input with a keyboard, optical character reader or optical mark reader, and the other is indirect input, which uses data entry equipment to record data into a certain medium (tape, disk, optical disc) Etc.), and then import the computer from that media. Data preparation equipment is used to complete various preparations before data is entered into the computer.

The purpose of data preparation equipment is to acquire data, that is, to collect source data and transform it into a medium or form that can be read into a computer. These devices can only prepare data and read them out later by a computer input device; they can also not only perform data acquisition, but also enter the computer. For example, bank equipment, retail equipment (point of sale system), learning equipment, word (text) processing equipment, typesetting equipment and data acquisition equipment in factories or laboratories, and those that require graphic input are data preparation equipment ^[1]

Various data preparation equipment and related data entry technologies can be divided into two categories:

Transcriptional data entry equipment : Includes all these data preparation equipment, which transcribes the data prepared on the file where the data occurred to another medium that can be read and interpreted by a computer. The following data preparation devices fall into this category: card punchers, paper punchers, tape encoders, cassette and floppy disk encoders, multi-station key-tape systems, shared logical key-disk systems, online keyboards Perforation proofing system, sliding (setting) input device and magnetic character reader.

Source data entry equipment : For this type of equipment, data is prepared in a machine-readable form at the data source, so that it can be read directly by a computer without the need for intermediate data transcription steps. Included in this type of data entry technology include

Paper tape punching machine

The paper puncher makes data entry no longer limited by the 80 or 96 columns of information on the card. In this way, the information contained in the information records related to a specific transaction can be more or less as needed, and is no longer subject to the physical restrictions imposed by the card. When the puncher makes an error, the error information on the paper tape can be rolled back, and the error message can be erased by wearing a string of deleted characters (the delete character is omitted when the tape reader reads it out), and then retyped. In many cases, the correctness is not directly verified, but the data is read directly by the computer and edited. In case an error is detected, it is generally corrected by first putting a reversal band on the erroneous information, and then perforating the correct information. In addition, the missing information can be worn on another piece of paper tape and then spliced into the main tape in order.

As with card punchers, the use of paper punchers has been declining. Manually preparing paper tape is mainly used in non-computer environments related to telex and fax, or as an input medium to control CNC machine tools. Computer typeset paper tapes are often prepared as computer output. However, even in these remaining applications, other media such as cassette tapes are taking paper tapes and replacing them.

Direct input terminal

This type of terminal allows the computer to not only receive the data entered at the original location immediately, but also edit it when receiving the data, so that the computer file to be accessed can verify the entered information and immediately notify the terminal operator when an error occurs.

Information that cannot be checked against a computer file can be verified by typing again (or some other repetitive input, such as voice input), and the computer can check whether each input is the same information. In this way, although verification may still be required, the amount of data to be verified is reduced. This simplifies the calibration process and basically eliminates the delay of data transmission. There are many types of devices that can connect to the terminal and communicate with the computer.

Intelligent Terminal

The intelligent terminal has various program capabilities, which are generally provided by the control processor with appropriate storage space and auxiliary software. This allows it to do a lot of formatting and editing of the information before it is sent to the computer after the data is entered. In this way, various editing checks can be performed as data is entered, and errors can be corrected at this time. However, full editing of the verification information against the file is only possible after the data has been sent to the computer. This can be done almost immediately when the terminal is working online.