How the Vietnam Veteran's
Memorial led to website management

   Go to the VVMF web site

In mid-1981 our company, Datalantic in Atlanta was contacted by the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Fund (VVMF) to create and typeset the database of the official casualty list of the Vietnam-era furnished by the Department of Defense.

The data was furnished to us on 9 track tape with each name (record) in alphabetical order. The data also included hometown. rank, date of casualty, rank, DOB and service branch.

The "Wall" was designed by Mia Ling to depict the names in a chronological order - from 1959 thru 1975 - with each line representing five names across - alphabetically, from data of casualty. We had a Computer Automation mini with a "big" 80 mb hard disk connected to an Alphatype CRS typesetting device - and no software - to speak of!

Both my partner and I were Vietnam-era vets and were adamant in getting this job done. But how? In 1981 there really wasn't much out there to (1) read tape into a typesetting system; (2) reconstruct data to the specifications; (3) add typesetting commands; (4) make all the names cap size; and (5) sort by date of casualty within a line and alphabetize at the same time.

So we wrote it in Basic (where in the heck was MS SQL or Access?) - and it worked! We were able to parse the data to the specifications (remove and rearrange fields from the supplied-DOD data) - nearly automatically - sort by date and then by alpha; make everything capital letters; print for proofing by the Gold Star mothers and, finally, typeset the panels, which went to Tennessee for sand blasting. We finished the job on-time and were proud to be in Washington, DC that fall day in November, 1982.

From that humble program, we developed a variety of software to help typesetters to receive data from floppy disk word processors (remember the CPT and Wang systems in the mid-80s?); receive information from phone lines for processing and, in general, eliminate hand keying and sorting of information that had already been keyed for some reason.

This project - our proudest by far - for the VVMF led directly to our technology in use today to parse data from print stream and application programs and files for use in a variety of applications -  such as creating databases for web sites, rapid updating of information from keyed documents, GIS implementation by matching databases and list/directory implementation.