on other types of storage equipment. These observations are made to avoid any possible impression 

 that the Biology Code is designed only for the equipment hereafter described. On the other hand, it 

 should be made clear that this equipment is not being described as obsolete nor is it being necessarily 

 described as inadequate for use with the Biology Code, except under the situation of storing and 

 handling an enormous quantity of data such as that of the CBCC. 



Although the scope of the Center's information collection surpasses the capacity of the equip- 

 ment it used, the fact that its early development has been with this equipment must be considered as 

 a distinct advantage. It means that the procedures developed and described here are applicable to 

 standard business machines which are widely available. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that the 

 special designs for Code Sheets, IBM punched cards for biology coding, and the organization of the 

 Code can be adopted directly for coding projects of more limited scope for which the machines will be 

 fully adequate. 



The electronic machines used for handling the information consisted of standard International 

 Business Machine equipment, including IBM punches, sorters, an interpreter, a reproducing punch, 

 and a collator. Detailed descriptions of these machines and their uses are readily available elsewhere. 



Sorting has two general applications. The first and more obvious is that of arranging a file of 

 punched cards in a given sequence (for example, in ascending Chemical Serial Number order). The 

 second is in selecting (searching for) a card with a given symbol, or a group of cards related by having 

 a given symbol in common, from a stack of cards or a file that is not in any order or not in such an 

 order that would allow a rapid hand selection of the desired cards to be made. Both IBM sorters, Types 

 075 and 082, were available for the Center's use. 



Collation refers essentially to a process of merging or matching two sets of cards, but the IBM 

 collator is used to perform additional functions; the most important uses to the Center were: (1) checking 

 the filing sequence in files; (2) merging two or more separate groups of cards into one combined file; 

 (3) selection of some desired combination of information on certain cards without disturbing the original 

 order of the remaining card file; and (4) matching two or more groups of cards for coincidence of a given 

 characteristic. The matching operation is probably the most useful in answering questions. An answer 

 that would justify the use of the collator in matching would be composed of at least two "components", 

 ordinarily a chemical component vs. one or more biological components. Each of these may be selected 

 by hand from one of the files and the matching operation then determines which of the cards, having the 

 essential biology information punched on them, match the cards having the essential chemical punching. 

 The matching occurs through any identical punching of the Chemical Serial Numbers between chemistry 

 cards and biology cards. 



Automatic reproduction of all or any part of the card may be accomplished on the reproducing 

 punch. This permits establishing at will new or specialized files from existing cards. The same 

 machine was used by the CBCC for the purpose of checking accuracy of punching as follows. The 

 process of punching the information on either biology cards or chemistry cards was performed in 

 duplicate. In other words, the card for the test organism file and the card for the biology serial file 

 were each punched independently by different operators using the same coded information source. The 

 two cards then were matched by the reproducer for identity and accuracy of punching; if a discrepancy 

 between the supposedly identically punched cards occurred, the machine stopped and pointed out the 

 exact discrepancy. 



The interpreter is designed to read the card perforations and print the code symbols they repre- 

 sent; it can not interpret the code symbols into the biological information they represent. 



In addition, there is an electronic statistical machine (referred to as Type 101) which supple- 

 ments the sorter. The latter is limited in function by being able to sort only in a single column of the 

 punched card. For certain large tasks, the 101 is preferred because of its capacity to sort not only in 

 a single column, but to sort selectively in many columns simultaneously. 



The Biology Code 

 The General Character of the Biology Code : 



While the observations of this division and the next may be regarded as obvious by those readers 



