INFORMATION COMPACTION SYSTEM

摘要

This invention relates to devices to compact data, and to transmit, store, compute with and cross-reference this compacted data. It is particularly concerned with a system of computing devices which accepts any quantity of information from any number of sources (1), combines specific blocks of this data and turns the combination of blocks into a single expression which can be coded by a device for transmission or storage in a more compact form than the data originally fed into this coding device but which because an algorithm has been used to perform this coding can be decoded by a decoding device (7) to regenerate on a one-to-one basis the original data provided to the input device (4). Another device which compacts the information further by approximate methods is particularly applicable to the transmission and storage of graphical and acoustic information. This invention comprising coding, decoding and information storage devices has particular application to the transmission, storage, recall, computation and referencing of information in which the compactness and security of the information is a requirement. Examples of applications in which this is needed or is desirable include the analogue and digital telephone systems including voice and data transmissions, television and radio transmission, disc and tape recordings, computers, computer networks and electrical, optical and chemical memories for the storage of information in digital or analogue form.