Jonkers Business Machines

Jonkers Business Machines (1960-1969) was a US company that developed the Termatrex index machine.

Jonkers Business Machines was a company founded by Frederick Jonker in 1960 to market Termatrex equipment.

Termatrex was an optical coincidence index system, also known as a feature card system. Instead of a record for each document with index terms attached, a record was created for each attribute (index term for topic, creator, etc., with the ID for each document assigned that attribute. A large cards, one for each attribute, had a fine grid with a single position for each document ID. To index a document the cards for its attributes were superimposed and a hole carefully in at the at the unique position for that document's ID.

To search for all documents with any particular attribute the card for that attribute is palced on a lighted surface and little spots of light, only where holes have been punched, reveal the ID numbers of all such documents.

Coordinate searches -- for documents with a two or more particular attributes -- were findable by superimposing the cards for the two or more attributes on the lighted surface. Spots of lights would appear only for documents having those attributes, regardless of whatever other attributes those documents may have had.

The basic equipment, other than the cards, were a punch [1] and a viewer .

Gerald Sophar was an officer in the company. Other individuals involved included Mortimer Taube.

Further reading