Farrington Character Sensing Machine 9SP3
name: label: maker
content: Farrington Manufacturing Company
notes: label: Description
content: In late 1950, David H. Shepard (1923-2007), working in his attic in Falls Church,Virginia, with Mr. Harvey Cook, completed his Model No. 3 reader, a device for optical character recognition. By March of 1951, Shepard had formed Intelligent Machines Research Corporation in Arlington, and filed for a patent for his "apparatus for reading." IMR Corporation distributed about thiry copies of a description of "The Analyzing Reader: An Automatic Reading Device." However, it soon sold rights to the machine to the Farrington Maufacturing Company in Springfield, Virginia, which began selling it in 1956. This is an early example of the machine with the Farrington nameplate. The electronic character-sensing device read numbers on a 51-column tabulating card and punched information back into the card. It proved useful in reading and punching credit sales tab card invoices, but did not sell widely.
label: Description
content: When Farrington Manufacturing presented the device to the Smithsonian, they referred to it as a model 9SP3.
label: Description
content: Reference:
label: Description
content: Accession file 1985.0614.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Massachusetts, Boston
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Farrington Manufacturing Company
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1985.0614.01
label: accession number
content: 1985.0614
label: catalog number
content: 1985.0614.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: scanner
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 156.7 cm x 94 cm x 53.7 cm; 61 11/16 in x 37 in x 21 1/8 in
label: Measurements
content: overall: 61 1/2 in x 21 in x 37 in; 156.21 cm x 53.34 cm x 93.98 cm