SORTING OUR THE R.A.F.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 92, 17 August 1942, Page 6

SORTING OUR THE R.A.F.

eß= AT THE RATE OF 400 MEN A MINUTE Essential facts about each of the thousands of members, of the R.A.F. are now being sorted out by a special machine at the rate of 400 a minute. Particulars about the man, where he is, what he is doing, are entered up on separate cards. The facts arc first represented by tiny holes punched in the cards; the cards are then automatically checked up by another machine and placed fti a sorting machine which. mechanically groups and arranges them at a speed of 24,000 an hour. They finally go into a tabulating machine which "translates" the holes into words, and figures ! Apart from the R.A.F., hundreds of the machines are to-day helping to speed Britain's war effort in factories producing aeroplanes, ships, guns and all types of munitions of war in different parts of the country, where they provide, hourly re-' cords of output, of progress of orders, of availability of stocks., in short all the information essential for coordinating efforts to .speed up and increase output. The War Office lias them and they have recently been supplied to Australia's Ministry of Munitions, The Egyptian Post Office in Cairo i< using them too. willi cards done in Arabic, for accounting work. Scotland Yard ha>. introduced them for its. statistic--: ami io-iiny they are also busily recoril'ing births, deaths, marriages, ru-enicnl i:u;.-;-es and Board of Trade v«Uinv-.