FIELDATA character encoding

Military primary (1xxxxxx) code, a representative military supervisory (0xxxxxx) code, UNIVAC graphical code.
Classification	7-bit or 6-bit basic Latin encoding
Preceded by	ITA 2
Succeeded by	US-ASCII

FIELDATA (also written as Fieldata) was a pioneering computer project run by the US Army Signal Corps in the late 1950s that intended to create a single standard (as defined in MIL-STD-188A/B/C^[1][2][3][4]) 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.^[1][5] 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),^[6][7][8] but was never completed.

Because FIELDATA did not specify codes for interconnection and data transmission control, different systems (like "STANDARD FORM", "COMLOGNET Common language code", "SACCOMNET (465L) Control Code"^[9][5]) used different control functions. Intercommunication between them was difficult.^[1]

FIELDATA is the original character set used internally in UNIVAC computers of the 1100 series, each six-bit character contained in six sequential bits of the 36-bit word of that computer. The direct successor to the UNIVAC 1100 is the Unisys 2200 series computers, which used FIELDATA (although ASCII is now also common with each character encoded in 1/4 of a word, or 9 bits). Because some of the FIELDATA characters are not represented in ASCII, the Unisys 2200 uses '^', '"' and '_' characters for codes 004_oct, 076_oct and 077_oct respectively.

The FIELDATA project ran from 1956 until it was stopped during a reorganization in 1962.

FIELDATA characters

Character map

Footnotes

References and further reading

• Fleming, George; James, Nathan L. (2002-12-17). "Univac Fieldata Codes". 1.0. Greenbelt, USA: National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Archived from the original on 2016-05-24. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
• Haralambous, Yannis (September 2007). Fonts & Encodings. Translated by Horne, P. Scott (1st ed.). Sebastopol, California, USA: O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-596-10242-5.
• Jennings, Thomas Daniel (2020-03-17) [1999]. "An annotated history of some character codes or ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Infiltration". Sensitive research (SR-IX). Retrieved 2020-03-17.
• Leubbert, William F. (1960a) [1959-12-01/03 (International Workshop on Managing Requirements Knowledge)]. Written at U.S. Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, USA. Data Transmission Equipment Concepts for FIELDATA (PDF). 1959 Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference (WJCC). Boston, USA: American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS). pp. 189–196. doi:10.1109/AFIPS.1959.27. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-05-23. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
• Leubbert, William F. (September 1960b). "Data Processing as a Tool for Generalizing Communications Systems". Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Part I: Communication and Electronics. 79 (4): 431–436. doi:10.1109/TCE.1960.6367290. S2CID 51649324.
• Mackenzie, Charles E. (1980). Coded Character Sets, History and Development (1 ed.). Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 61, 64, 86. ISBN 978-0-201-14460-4. LCCN 77-90165. Retrieved 2016-05-22. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Walker, John (1996-08-06). "UNIVAC 1100 Series FIELDATA Code". UNIVAC Memories. Archived from the original on 2016-05-22. Retrieved 2016-05-22.