A Names Input Station for Automated Foreign Names Production at the United States Defense Mapping Agency

摘要

The United States Defense Mapping Agency is the federal organization charged with maintaining foreign names information. The Foreign Place Names File contains references to more than 3.5 million approved and 1.5 million variant names for foreign countries, undersea features, and extra-terrestrial features. The file is currently stored on index cards, because existing computer equipment has not been capable of displaying and processing the diacritics and special symbols characteristic of the extended Latin alphabet. In a joint effort with the US Army Engineer Topographic Laboratories and the Illinois Institute of Technology and Research Institute, the United States Defense Mapping Agency is developing a prototype Names Input Station to digitally process foreign names data. The station can input, output, edit, and display diacritics and special symbols for the over one hundred romanized non-English languages required by the agency. (Author)