ROBOT CLERKS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 69, 20 February 1931, Page 7

ROBOT CLERKS.

TO HELP IN BRITISH CENSUS.

When the Registrar-General comes to tackle the titanic job of sifting out the mass of information which will be put at his disposal by the British census of April 26, his staff of ordinary clerks will be supplemented by a corps of Robot 6uper clerks. These machines, which modestly veil their qualities under the prosaic style of sorter-counter-printers, will sort out the details of the groups into which the census particulars are divided. Each machine can take three groups at a time, count the result, and print it on a Ciird. There are 250 of them, and each is equal to the work of scores of clerics, i.-lt loves cards and can deal with 500 every few minutes. It is, moreover, exempt from the fallibility which handicaps the human. Indeed, in the words of the Government, official, “it can be used to supply any conceivable sort of information anybody could possibly want out of the census returns.” When the census papers reach the Registrar-General’s Department, the information is transferred to cards, containing the same sub-divisions, by means bf a machine, but the details are represented only by punched holes, and while incomprehensible to the uninitiated mind, are easily read by the officials whose duty it is to collate the general information supplied. Every person in the land, from the youngest child to the centenarian, has a card of his own, containing his punched particulars. It is after this preliminary coding that the new Robot machine comes into operation to Split up the particulars into all manner of groups such as ages, religions, professions, and occupations, and children, for various official statistical purposes.