Optical Memory Cards: A Comparison with Other Current Technologies and Potential Military Applications

摘要

As the industrialized nations of the world move further into the Information Age, the storage and distribution of information becomes increasingly more critical to the success of our daily endeavors. No where is this more apparent than in the military community. As the amount of information each military unit must have to function efficiently and effectively increases, so does the space required to store it. This situation has prompted at least one high-level Navy official to initiate a program to test the concept of a paperless ship by 1990. At the head of the list of systems to meet the mass storage requirements of the program are the optical memory technologies. Included under this heading are the optical memory cards. An optical memory card is the size of a standard 54mm x 85mm wallet card and, in one particular configuration, is capable of storing 800 pages of text alone or 200 pages of combined test and graphics. Employing optical memory card technology in the paperless ship will reduce the space required to store technical manuals and directives by a factor of over 200 Two applications; A Technical Document Publishing, Distributing and Update Program; and An Individual Personnel Record Storage and Update Program are discussed as potentially beneficial to the military community. Keywords: Data storage systems; Theses; Memory devices; Optical memory card; Laser card; Integrated circuit (IC) card; Smart card; Magnetic stripe card; Optical mass storage systems.