DEVELOPMENT OF MECHANIZED DOCUMENTATION Available to Purchase

In 1964 Herbert Coblans wrote that the development of photo‐effect lithography, the invention and evolution of photographic techniques, had profoundly affected the ‘recording of knowledge, the making of libraries and all that that means’. He went on to ask if ‘two other lines of technical development, Hollerith's punched cards… and the electronic computer … [which] represent a third revolution, comparable to the other two’, had had the same significance for libraries and documentation. When originally asked, this question could not be answered with any clarity. Fourteen years later it should be possible to answer the question with some authority and to identify the other areas of technical development that form an integral part of the mechanized documentation services of today and those which are under development for tomorrow.