Form and Function: An Approach to the Automated Office

Abstract

A familiar and useful concept is to think of the work the computer does in terms of an input-processing-output sequence. ‘Input’ refers both to the contents of the work and to the form in which it is entered (punched cards, keyboard entry, stored information on tape, etc.); ‘output’, similarly, means both the information that comes out and its physical form. And the ‘processing’ is what the computer is there for: the essential, if to many mysterious, operation which turns the raw input into the desired finished output.