Magnacard sorting techniques
R. M. Hayes · 1958
The Magnavox Company has recently announced Magnacard, bases on the storage of information on magnetic cards, each with a capacity of 5,000 bits. These cards can be sorted and collated at speeds up to 100 cards per second and can be read at rates up to 60,000 alpha-numeric characters per second. This paper is concerned with a procedure for efficiently using such a system in sorting a group of items each of which is much smaller than the capacity of a card. The procedure is applicable to any storage medium with a fixed block length. It is based upon combining the high-speed card sorting capability of Magnacard with the high-speed computing capability of a central processor. The sorting procedure involves storage of multiple items to a card. These cards are then sorted into chains on the basis of the sorting fields of a single item on each card. The items on the resulting sets of cards then are merged by the central processor into completely sorted chains. By an alternation of such card sorts and data sorts, a completely sorted sequence is produced. Time savings over either solely computer performed sorts or solely card performed sorts are significant.