Datamation

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The use of computers and automated machines to process large volumes of information with little human intervention
2. Electronic handling of records and information by computer systems, carried out automatically in place of manual methods
3. Automatic processing of business information through computing equipment, a term once popular in the early days of computing

Etymology: "Datamation" is a blend of "data" and "automation," coined in the mid-1950s for the new business of processing information with electronic computers. The likely inventor was the American computing journalist Ted Dunn or the trade publication of the same name, but the attribution is uncertain, so the safest account is simply that the term appeared in the computing industry around 1955 and was quickly taken up as a name for the field. The "-mation" ending comes from "automation," itself a 1940s blend of "automatic" and "-ation," describing machines that run with little human intervention. Putting "data" in front of it captured the idea that computers could now handle large volumes of information the same way factories handled physical goods. The word had its greatest currency in the 1950s and 1960s, when it appeared in the name of a widely read trade magazine, Datamation, founded in 1957. Its vogue faded as "computing," "information technology" and "data processing" became the standard terms.