unit record

Unit Records maintenance problems in the harsh environmental conditions to which punched paper card systems are subjected in Southeast Asia might be alleviated greatly by a new concept developed by the U.S.Army Electronics Command.

1987 Howard Fosdick: VM/CMS Handbook for Programmers, Users, and Managers Page 114 Pub. Hayden Books Card readers, card punches, and printers are unit record devices. They must be dedicated solely to a particular program for the duration of that program's execution. Otherwise, input to (and output from) different programs would be interspersed. These dedicated devices render a multi-user computer system slow and inefficient because programs must wait for access to devices they require.