MARS terminal - JR - Tokyo area - Dec 2015

, short for ''Magnetic-electronic Automatic'' ''Reservation System,'' is a train ticket reservation system used by the

Japan Railways Group The Japan Railways Group, commonly known as the or simply JR, is a network of railway companies in Japan formed after the Corporate spin-off, division and privatization of the government-owned Japanese National Railways (JNR) on April 1, 1987. ...

(JR Group) companies and travel agencies in Japan. It was developed jointly by

Hitachi () is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1910 and headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo. The company is active in various industries, including digital systems, power and renewable ener ...

and the former

Japanese National Railways The , abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987. Network Railways As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pre ...

(JNR), and inherited by the (JR Systems), which is jointly owned by the seven railway companies of the JR Group: the

East Japan Railway Company The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters are in ...

(JR East),

Central Japan Railway Company is the main railway company operating in the Chūbu (Nagoya) region of central Japan. It is officially abbreviated in English as JR Central and occasionally as JR Tokai (). The term ''Tōkai'' refers to the southern portion of Central Japan, ...

(JR Central), West Japan Railway Company (JR West), Hokkaido Railway Company (JR Hokkaido), Shikoku Railway Company (JR Shikoku),

Kyushu Railway Company The , also referred to as , is one of the seven constituent companies of Japan Railways Group (JR Group). It operates intercity rail services within Kyushu, Japan. It formerly operated the Beetle (JR Kyushu), Beetle hydrofoil service across th ...

(JR Kyushu), and Japan Freight Railway Company (JR Freight). The MARS system used in JR ticket offices is Japan’s largest online real-time system, providing a year-round availability of 99.999%. It offers a range of services, including seat reservations on

Shinkansen The , colloquially known in English as the bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. It was initially built to connect distant Japanese regions with Tokyo, the capital, to aid economic growth and development. Beyond lon ...

and

Limited Express A limited express is a type of express train or express bus service that stops at fewer locations compared to other express services on the same or similar routes. Japan The term "limited express" is a common translation of the Japanese ...

trains and fare calculation for basic fare tickets, commuter passes, and express tickets. It is currently connected to approximately 10,000 terminals at JR ticket offices and travel agencies, as well as to online systems run by the individual JR companies. The system is accessed about 8 million times every day, with a daily average of over 1.9 million tickets sold.

Outline

The host computer of the system was previously located in Kokubunji, Tokyo until 2013, when it was moved to an undisclosed location in the northern part of the

Kantō region The is a geography, geographical region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures of Japan, prefectures: Chiba Prefecture, Chiba, Gunma Prefe ...

. The system is managed by JR Systems since 1 April 1987 following the division and privatization of JNR. Ticket offices at JR stations equipped with MARS terminals are called , selling tickets of all JR Group trains and partly highway buses and route buses and ferries. It is possible for passengers to reserve tickets of buses and trains from one month prior to the given trip. In the JR Central region, these are instead called by the name きっぷうりば ''kippu uriba'', meaning "ticket sales counter".

Naming

Originally short for "Magnetic-electronic Automatic (seat) Reservation System", the

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

was later changed to "Multi Access Reservation System". It has since been reverted to its original meaning.

History

MARS-1

The MARS-1 system was created by Mamoru Hosaka, Yutaka Ohno, and others at the Japanese National Railways' R&D Institute (now the Railway Technical Research Institute), and was built in 1958. It was the world's first seat reservation system for trains, and entered service in February 1960, initially only providing bookings for the Kodama and Tsubame limited express services. The MARS-1 was capable of reserving seat positions, and was controlled by a Hitachi

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

transistor computer A transistor computer, now often called a second-generation computer, is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The first generation of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, w ...

with a

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

consisting of a thousand

transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...

s and a magnetic

drum memory Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. Many early computers, called drum computers or drum machines, used drum ...

unit for data storage, which was where the MARS acronym originated from. In 2008, the MARS-1 system received a ''"One Step on Electro Technology -Look Back to the Future-"'' commemorative plaque from the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. MR12W MARS

MARS 100/200

MARS 300

MARS 500

MARS 501

Introduced in stages between 2002 and 2004, the MARS 501 introduced the concept of an

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

-based

client–server model The client–server model is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks or workloads between the providers of a resource or service, called servers, and service requesters, called clients. Often clients and servers communicate ov ...

. Also, the ticket paper type was changed to thermal paper.

MARS 505

The latest version of MARS uses the MARS 505 system which was introduced in April 2020, which expanded on contactless, and ticketless boarding and booking capabilities brought along by the rise of

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

s on smartphones and tablets.

References

External links

JR Railway Information Systems
{{Japan Railways Group Passenger rail transport in Japan Travel technology Computer-related introductions in 1960 Train-related introductions in 1960 1960 software Computer reservation systems Route planning software Hitachi products