Electrographic is a term used for punched-card and page-scanning technology that allowed cards or pages marked with a
pencil
A pencil () is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core in a protective casing that reduces the risk of core breakage and keeps it from marking the user's hand.
Pencils create marks by physical abrasion, leaving a trail of ...
to be processed or converted into
punched cards
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were wide ...
. The primary developer of electrographic systems was
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
, who used mark sense as a trade name for both the forms and processing system. The term has since come to be used generically for any technology allowing marks made using ordinary writing implements to be processed, encompassing both
optical mark recognition
Optical mark recognition (OMR) collects data from people by identifying markings on a paper.
OMR enables the hourly processing of hundreds or even thousands of documents. A common application of this technology is used in exams, where students m ...
and electrographic technology.
The term "mark sense" is not generally used when referring to technology that distinguishes the shape of the mark; the general term
optical character recognition
Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...
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 processing meter readings recordings on
turnaround documents and recording long distance telephone calls. Many thousands of pencils were made expressly for mark sense applications by the Dur-O-Lite Pencil Company and by the
Autopoint Company. Many of the pencils made for the "
Bell System
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the AT&T Corporation, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America fo ...
" were stamped "MARK SENSE LEAD" and for the Federal Government, "US Government Electrographic."
In the early 1930s, science teacher
Reynold B. Johnson developed an automatic test scoring machine. IBM bought Johnson's invention and hired him as an engineer - the machine was sold as the
IBM 805 Test Scoring Machine. 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 part of the
Educational Testing Service
Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a P ...
. Johnson went on to develop a range of electrographic mark-sense machinery.
Various IBM equipment could be used with mark sense cards including the
IBM 513 and
IBM 514 Reproducing Punches, the
IBM 557
The IBM 557 Alphabetic Interpreter allowed holes in punched cards to be interpreted and the punched card characters printed on any row or column, selected by a control panel. Introduced in 1954, the machine was a synchronous system where brushes ...
Alphabetic Interpreter, and the
IBM 519 Electric Document Originating Machine.
See also
*
Turnaround document
References
*
*
External links
Guide to Dur-O-Lite and Autopoint Mark Sense Pencils*
Douglas W. Jones'
collection of optical mark cards
Punched card
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ja:マークシート