Editing Fieldata (section)

{{short description|Military communication project and ASCII precursor}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2019|cs1-dates=y}}
{{infobox character encoding
| name = FIELDATA character encoding
| caption = Military primary (1xxxxxx) code, a representative military supervisory (0xxxxxx) code, UNIVAC graphical code.
| image = Fieldata.svg
| classification = 7-bit or [[Six-bit character code|6-bit]] [[ISO Basic Latin alphabet|basic Latin]] encoding
| prev = [[International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2|ITA 2]]
| next = [[US-ASCII]]
}}
'''FIELDATA''' (also written as '''Fieldata''') was a pioneering computer project run by the [[United States Army|US Army]] [[Signal Corps (United States Army)|Signal Corps]] in the late 1950s that intended to create a single standard (as defined in ''[[MIL-STD-188|MIL-STD-188A/B/C]]''{{sfn|Mackenzie|1980}}<ref name="MIL-STD-188A">{{citation |title=Military Communication System Technical Standard, MIL-STD-188A |date=1958-04-25}}</ref><ref name="MIL-STD-188B">{{citation |title=Military Communication System Technical Standard, MIL-STD-188B |date=1964-02-24}}</ref><ref name="MIL-STD-188C">{{citation |title=Military Communication System Technical Standard, MIL-STD-188C |date=1969-11-24}}</ref>) for collecting and distributing battlefield information. In this respect it could be thought of as a generalization of the [[United States Air Force|US Air Force]]'s [[Semi Automatic Ground Environment|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.{{sfn|Mackenzie|1980}}{{sfn|Jennings|2020}} 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 Electric Products|Sylvania]], and the [[BASICPAC]] and [[LOGICPAC]] from [[Philco computers|Philco]]. Another system, [[ARTOC]], was intended to provide graphical output (in the form of [[photographic slide]]s),<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kent |first1=Allen |last2=Lancour |first2=Harold |title=Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 5 - Circulation to Coordinate Indexing |date=1971 |publisher=CRC Press |isbn=9780824720056 |pages=395, 398 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dvWkHF_6NAgC&q=%22ARTOC%22&pg=PA395 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Army Tactical Operations Central (ARTOC) information system |url=http://sr-ix.com/ARCHIVE/ARTOC/index.html |website=sr-ix.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Man in Command Information Processing Systems--A Research Program |date=1963 |pages=1–4 |chapter-url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA079172 |language=en |chapter=THE ARTOC}}</ref> 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''"<ref name="ITT_1968">{{cite book |title=Reference Data for Radio Engineers |author=[[International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation]] (ITT) |date=1968 |edition=5 |pages=Appendix |isbn= 978-0-672-20678-8 |publisher=[[Howard W. Sams and Co.]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1N1FAQAAIAAJ |access-date=2016-05-23}}</ref>{{sfn|Jennings|2020}}) used different control functions. Intercommunication between them was difficult.{{sfn|Mackenzie|1980}}

FIELDATA is the original character set used internally in [[UNIVAC]] computers of the [[UNIVAC 1100/2200 series|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]] [[UNIVAC 1100/2200 series|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<sub>[[octal|oct]]</sub>, 076<sub>oct</sub> and 077<sub>oct</sub> respectively.

The FIELDATA project ran from 1956{{citation needed|reason=Some sources state 1957 rather than 1956. Research the truth. |date=May 2016}} until it was stopped during a reorganization in 1962.{{citation needed|reason=If stopped in 1962, what was the FIELDATA-specific stuff in MIL-STD-188C as of 1969 then? |date=May 2016}}