Sears, Roebuck & Company sponsored the development of a specialized
punched card system to track garment inventory, produce timely management reports, and reduce clerical errors. A pilot system was operational in 1952. The A. Kimball Company, an established price tag manufacturer in
New York City, and the Karl J. Braun Engineering Company of
Stamford, Connecticut developed the garment tags and the machine that marked and punched them. The
Potter Instrument Company of
Great Neck, New York developed a photoelectric tag reader for the 1952 pilot system. The reader scanned 100 tags per minute. A lens system enlarged the image of a tag's holes projected by a gas-type
photoflash tube onto an array of
phototubes. The phototubes fired
thyratrons that activated
relay logic to translate the tag's coded digits into
Hollerith code and punch a standard sized punched card. ==References==