Data conversion, communication and analysis system

摘要

A local station and a central computer subsystem remotely located from each other are interconnected by a transmission system, such as a telephone network, so that a medium containing visual data can be read in the vicinity where the cart is made, but automatically analyzed by a computer at the central computer subsystem. The local station includes an optical reader device for reading the medium and converting the visual data contained thereon into numerical data in the form of binary electrical signals. The binary electrical signals are compressed by a hardware compressor circuit and a software compressor program so that the transmission time for transmitting the data to the central computer subsystem is reduced. Once the data is transmitted to the central computer subsystem, an analysis of the data is made after any desired modifications of the data have been made through a graphics terminal.