In telecommunication

Telecommunication

Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...

, a machine-readable medium (automated data medium) is a medium capable of storing data

Data (computing)

In computer science, data is information in a form suitable for use with a computer. Data is often distinguished from programs. A program is a sequence of instructions that detail a task for the computer to perform...

 in a machine-readable format that can be accessed by an automated sensing device and capable of being turned into (practically in every case) some form of binary.

Examples of machine-readable media include (a) magnetic disk

Disk storage

Disk storage or disc storage is a general category of storage mechanisms, in which data are digitally recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical methods on a surface layer deposited of one or more planar, round and rotating disks...

s, cards, tapes

Magnetic tape

Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...

, and drums, (b) punched card

Punched card

A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...

s and paper tapes, (c) optical disks, (d) barcode

Barcode

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional . Later they evolved into rectangles,...

s and (e) magnetic ink characters

Magnetic ink character recognition

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, or MICR, is a character recognition technology used primarily by the banking industry to facilitate the processing of cheques and makes up the routing number and account number at the bottom of a check. The technology allows computers to read information off...

.

Common machine-readable data storage

Data storage device

thumb|200px|right|A reel-to-reel tape recorder .The magnetic tape is a data storage medium. The recorder is data storage equipment using a portable medium to store the data....

 and data transmission

Data transmission

Data transmission, digital transmission, or digital communications is the physical transfer of data over a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication channel. Examples of such channels are copper wires, optical fibres, wireless communication channels, and storage media...

 technologies include processing waveform

Waveform

Waveform means the shape and form of a signal such as a wave moving in a physical medium or an abstract representation.In many cases the medium in which the wave is being propagated does not permit a direct visual image of the form. In these cases, the term 'waveform' refers to the shape of a graph...

s, optical character recognition

Optical character recognition

Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...

 (OCR) and barcode

Barcode

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional . Later they evolved into rectangles,...

s. Any information retrievable by any form of energy can be machine-readable. Examples include:

• Acoustics
  Acoustics
  Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
  
  
• Chemical
  • Photochemical
    Photochemistry
    Photochemistry, a sub-discipline of chemistry, is the study of chemical reactions that proceed with the absorption of light by atoms or molecules.. Everyday examples include photosynthesis, the degradation of plastics and the formation of vitamin D with sunlight.-Principles:Light is a type of...
    
    
• Electrical
  • Semiconductor
    Semiconductor
    A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
    
     used in volatile
    Volatile memory
    Volatile memory, also known as volatile storage, is computer memory that requires power to maintain the stored information, unlike non-volatile memory which does not require a maintained power supply...
    
     RAM microchips
  • Floating-gate transistor used in non-volatile
    NVRAM
    Non-volatile random-access memory is random-access memory that retains its information when power is turned off, which is described technically as being non-volatile...
    
     memory card
    Memory card
    A memory card or flash card is an electronic flash memory data storage device used for storing digital information. They are commonly used in many electronic devices, including digital cameras, mobile phones, laptop computers, MP3 players, and video game consoles...
    
    s
  • Radio transmission
    Transmission (telecommunications)
    Transmission, in telecommunications, is the process of sending, propagating and receiving an analogue or digital information signal over a physical point-to-point or point-to-multipoint transmission medium, either wired, optical fiber or wireless...
    
    
• Magnetic storage
  Magnetic storage
  Magnetic storage and magnetic recording are terms from engineering referring to the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetization in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is accessed using...
  
  
• Mechanical
  Classical mechanics
  In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
  
  
  • Pins and holes
    • Punched card
      Punched card
      A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
      
      
    • Paper tape
      • Music roll
        Music roll
        A music roll is a storage medium used to operate a mechanical musical instrument. They are used for the player piano, mechanical organ, electronic carillon and various types of orchestrion. The vast majority of music rolls are made of paper...
        
        
    • Music box cylinder or disk
  • Grooves (See also Audio Data)
    • Phonograph cylinder
      Phonograph cylinder
      Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
      
      
    • Gramophone record
      Gramophone record
      A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
      
      
    • DictaBelt
      Dictabelt
      The Dictabelt or Memobelt was a form of recording medium introduced by the American Dictaphone company in 1947. It used a type of "Write Once - Read Many" medium consisting of a thin, plastic belt 3.5" wide that was placed on a cylinder and spun like a tank tread. The needle would then move slowly...
      
       (groove on plastic belt)
    • Capacitance Electronic Disc
• Optics
  Optics
  Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...
  
  
  • Optical storage
    Optical storage
    Optical storage is a term from engineering referring to the storage of data on an optically readable medium. Data is recorded by making marks in a pattern that can be read back with the aid of light, usually a beam of laser light precisely focused on a spinning disc. An older example, that does...
    
    
• Thermodynamic

See also

• Human-readable
  Human-readable
  A human-readable medium or human-readable format is a representation of data or information that can be naturally read by humans.In computing, human-readable data is often encoded as ASCII or Unicode text, rather than presented in a binary representation...
  
  
• MARC standards
  MARC standards
  MARC, MAchine-Readable Cataloging, is a data format and set of related standards used by libraries to encode and share information about books and other material they collect...
  
  
• Machine-readable passport
  Machine-readable passport
  A Machine Readable Passport is a travel document where the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine readable travel documents in the 1980s....
  
  
• Paper data storage
  Paper data storage
  Paper data storage refers to the use of paper as a data storage device. This includes writing, illustrating, and the use of data that can be interpreted by a machine or is the result of the functioning of a machine...