Editing Soundex (section)

==History==
Soundex was developed by Robert C. Russell and Margaret King Odell<ref>{{cite journal|last=Odell|first=Margaret King|date=1956|title=The profit in records management|volume=20|pages=20|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OdUWAQAAMAAJ&q=%22margaret+king+odell%22|journal=Systems|location=New York}}</ref> and [[patent]]ed in 1918<ref>{{US patent reference|number= 1261167 |y= 1918 |m= 04 |d= 02 |title=(untitled) |inventor= R. C. Russell }} ([https://patents.google.com/patent/US1261167 Archived])</ref> and 1922.<ref>{{US patent reference|number= 1435663 |y= 1922 |m= 11 |d= 14 |inventor= R. C. Russell |title=(untitled) }} ([https://patents.google.com/patent/US1435663 Archived])</ref> A variation, American Soundex, was used in the 1930s for [[Historical Records Survey|a retrospective analysis]] of the [[United States Census|US censuses]] from 1890 through 1920. The Soundex code came to prominence in the 1960s when it was the subject of several articles in the ''[[Communications of the ACM|Communications]]'' and ''[[Journal of the ACM|Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery]]'', and especially when described in [[Donald Knuth|Donald Knuth's]] ''[[The Art of Computer Programming]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Knuth |first=Donald E. |title=The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 3, Sorting and Searching |year=1973 |publisher=Addison-Wesley |isbn=978-0-201-03803-3 |oclc=39472999 |pages=391–92 |url=http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html |author-link=Donald Knuth |access-date=2010-09-17 |archive-date=2008-09-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080904163709/http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The [[National Archives and Records Administration]] (NARA) maintains the current rule set for the official implementation of Soundex used by the U.S. government.<ref name="NARA_TSIS">{{cite web |date=30 May 2007 |title=The Soundex Indexing System |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/census/soundex.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200312153258/https://www.archives.gov/research/census/soundex |archive-date=12 March 2020 |access-date=24 December 2010 |website=National Archives |publisher=[[National Archives and Records Administration]]}}</ref> These encoding rules are available from NARA, upon request, in the form of General Information Leaflet 55, "Using the Census Soundex".