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CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
The present application relates to improvements upon the invention
disclosed in my earlier application Ser. No. 595,788 filed Apr. 2, 1984,
now U.S. Pat. No. 4,649,563.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer systems, and in a more
particular sense relates to a telephone directory listing information
system in which a computer is connectable through a telephone network to
remote locations from which queries can be directed to the computer, and
to which the computer transmits a suitable response.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Typically, in systems of the type described, a computer-stored data base is
accessed through a telephonic communications network. One keyboards, using
the telephone touch pad, an alphabetic or alpha-numeric query, in order to
transmit questions and requests for information from the remotely located
data base. From the data base, a synthesized voice response is transmitted
to the caller.
The normal procedure is to require keying of the entire name, and in some
instances the complete address, before processing the inquiry through the
data base.
It is clear that the present arrangement has the disadvantage in that it
consumes excessive time for processing inquiries for telephone directory
information. And, it multiplies the possibility of keying errors, in that
the more characters a caller has to key, the more chances the caller has
to make an error. This in turn means increased dissatisfaction with the
system, a serious reduction in the capability of the computer to respond
accurately or even make a response, and an even greater average in
processing time per inquiry.
It has heretofore been proposed, in this regard, to utilize a telephone
instrument having a touch pad as a form of computer terminal, to provide
access to a computerized data base. Heretofore it has been proposed that
the touch pad be modified substantially and/or operated in a manner that
requires double-punching of the keys or other relatively complex input
modes.
It has also been proposed to implement digital techniques for computer
voice response in, for example, a directory assistance system, wherein the
user keys in the full name, then *, initials, then * on a "Touch-tone"
telephone, and wherein the computer voice response provides, typically,
telephone, room, and organization numbers of the individual whose name and
initials were keyed by the user.
This arrangement has a notable disadvantage in that there is no interaction
between the computer data base and the user until the user has keyed in
the full name, and the initials, of the individual whose telephone number
is sought by the user, no matter how long that name may be and no matter
how difficult its spelling.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention aims to obviate the disadvantages that have been
noted in connection with the prior art. To this end, summarized briefly,
the invention utilizes a completely conventional touch pad of a telephone
instrument, requiring no masking of the pad, and requiring no requirement
for double-punching of keys, or other complex modes of inputting
information into the telephone network to provide access to the
computerized data base. Rather, the invention involves no more than a
simple impression of a word or words upon the touch pad, by selecting the
keys which have alphabetic indicia that permit spelling out of the legend
that is to be transmitted to the data base.
In accordance with the invention, it becomes unnecessary to key in one's
full name, * initials, and another * when the invention is applied, for
example, as a directory assistance system or in establishing direct
telephone communication between the user and the person whose name has
been keyed into the telephone instrument. Instead, after each keystroke
the computer searches its data base to achieve "unity" with only those
letters already entered. Thus, as soon as the computer establishes that
there is one and only one name that contains the string of letters already
keyed in, or that the data base does not contain any target listing having
those letters, it provides the user with a response.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
While the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in
the concluding portions herein, a preferred embodiment is set forth in the
following detailed description which may be best understood when read in
connection with the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the invention covered in the above-referred-to
application Ser. No. 595,788 (now U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,563), showing
schematically the relationship of the telephone instrument when interfaced
with associated computer components;
FIG. 2 is a schematic representation illustrating a national map and the
manner in which a system according to the invention of said earlier
application can be extended on a nationwide basis;
FIGS. 3-13 are schematic representations in the form of flow charts
illustrating an improvement in the invention as applied to a telephone
directory information system; and
FIG. 14 is a schematic representation illustrating a typical usage of the
system.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
The description which follows comprises first, a description of FIGS. 1 and
2, said description and drawing figures being those found in the above
referred to earlier application Ser. No. 595,788, now U.S. Pat. No.
4,649,563. Secondly, there is included a description of FIGS. 3-14,
comprising added matter not disclosed in the present case. In both
instances, the concept of spelling out a word by a single depression, for
each letter, of only that key (and no others) that represents that letter,
is retained.
Referring to FIG. 1, the reference numeral 10 designates a completely
conventional keypad of an ordinary telephone instrument of the
"Touch-tone" type. The telephone instrument of which key pad 10 is a
component also includes transmitter 12 and receiver 14.
Designated as 16 is an access processor, which itself is a computer station
connected between the telephone instrument and a main frame computer
located at a suitable geographic location which as shown in FIG. 2 can be
anywhere in the nation.
Telephone instrument components 10, 12, 14 are part of a telephone
instrument generally designated 18 in FIG. 2. Telephone instruments 18 are
connected to access processors suitably located across the nation as part
of a national network. All telephone instruments in a particular region
feed into a regional access processor, which in turn is connected to a
main frame computer 20 provided with suitable data bases 22.
Essentially, this comprises the complete system. As indicated above, each
and every component of the system is, per se, conventional and it is of
particular importance that no modification of the telephone instrument, in
any way, is required.
The usefulness of the system disclosed in my parent application is found in
the fact that it incorporates in a completely conventional telephone
instrument the capability of substitution of the instrument for a computer
terminal having alpha-numeric capability. Considering that only a
comparatively few residential or small business subscribers have, at
present, terminals of this type, the present invention enables a greatly
expanded number of potential users to have access to data base
distributors. In this system, the telephone instrument becomes the
computer terminal, in that the key pad of the instrument assumes the
encoding and transmitting function of a computer terminal keyboard. A
response from the computer becomes an audible message addressed to the
calling telephone and received by the user through the receiver of the
telephone instrument. The telephone instrument receiver in this way
assumes the function now discharged by a display screen and/or automatic
printer located at the site of the computer terminal from which the
inquiry came.
As an example, suppose it is desired to input the word P-A-T-E-N-T using a
key pad of the telephone as part of a data base inquiry. Using a computer
terminal the word PATENT would be typed on the keyboard. Using a key pad
telephone, the pad keys have letters superimposed upon numbers according
to the following scheme:
______________________________________
ALPHABETIC NUMERIC
______________________________________
A B C 2
D E F 3
G H I 4
J K L 5
M N O 6
P R S 7
T U V 8
W X Y 9
______________________________________
In this scheme, the letters Q and Z are assigned to the numeric digit 1.
The numerics 0 and 1 do not now have an alphabet assigned to them. In
addition to the numerics 0-9, there are two keys labeled * and # which do
not have any alphabetic assignment. For the purposes of the invention
disclosed in FIGS. 1 and 2, they are assigned as "space" and "end
transmit" respectively. However, in the improvement disclosed in FIGS.
3-14, they have been given new meanings, as will be apparent from the
description of FIGS. 3-14.
So, to express the word P-A-T-E-N-T, the numeric keys 7-2-8-3-6-8-# are
depressed. It is postulated that computer intelligence can decode this
numeric string back to the original alphabetic string.
In the first place, a trivial solution to the decoding, is to have the
computer, for a limited set of data, convert all expected alphabetic
strings to numeric strings and store them in a file. Then, receipt of a
numeric string causes lookup in the numeric string file and the conversion
to the alphabetic string is thus achieved.
In the case of a duplication such that two (or more) identical numeric
strings resulted from different alphabetic strings, the computer is
programmed to ask the user which alphabetic string was intended.
The concept of programming a computer to speak to the user is currently
implemented by use of a chip which translates from data stored in the
computer memory to intelligible speech.
Another approach to decoding the numeric string back to its original
alphabetic string is to employ algorithms which might be used in breaking
military codes. It is to be noted that military code breaking was one of
the earliest tasks assigned to computers. Computers are able to break
codes which military users desire to keep encrypted. It follows that
computers have a much easier task breaking codes that users desire to have
broken.
Taking the example of P-A-T-E-N-T, encoded as 7-2-8-3-6-8-#, the computer
has the task of examining the numeric string to determine its original
alphabetic string. This is easily accomplished by taking advantage of the
redundancy inherent in the English language, particularly with respect to
the usage of vowels vs. consonants.
The possible alphabetic combinations resulting from the numeric string are
derived as follows:
______________________________________
Numeric 7 - 2 - 8 - 3 - 6 - 8 - #
Alpha- P A T D M T
betic R B U E N U
equivalents S C V F O V
______________________________________
The computer, in accordance with the invention, disclosed in the parent
application, is programmed to create the table of alphabetic equivalents,
as above, and then to scan the table from left to right discarding all the
impossible combinations. For example, the string beginning with the
numeric 7 equated to P-R-S results for the first two letters in P-A, P-B,
P-C; and S-A, S-B, S-C. Of these nine combinations, clearly only P-A, R-A
and S-A are admissable strings. The others are impossible and so forth,
across the possible alphabetic string combinations corresponding to the
numeric pair 7-2.
As the computer proceeds across the numeric string, two letters at a time
pairing numerics first-second, second-third, third-fourth, fourth-fifth,
etc. discarding all impossible strings, only a very few strings remain
which are possibly valid with respect to the English language.
For example, for the word "PATENT", other possible strings are RATENT or
SATENT. Impossible strings are RBTENT or SBTENT, etc. After discarding all
impossible strings, the computer evaluates the remaining possible strings
to deduce what the questioner had in mind.
After deducing what the questioner had in mind, i.e., selecting from among
the possible strings, the computer checks its memory versus those strings
which are relevant to the phone number at hand. If after reviewing
possible strings which resulted in redundant possible strings, e.g.,
PATENT vs SATENT or RATENT and finding more than one in the data set of
allowable inputs to the specific phone number, the computer will then be
instructed to verbally ask the questioner which word is meant. That is to
say for example, the computer speaks to the inquirer and says "Do you mean
`PATENT` or `SATENT`? If you mean `PATENT` push the number 1. If you mean
`SATENT` push the number 2."
Another relevant piece of technology is a "valid word dictionary" of
upwards of 50,000 words which is a common device in word-processing
systems. The dictionary is used to catch spelling errors by assuming that
a correctly spelled word will be in the dictionary whereas an incorrectly
spelled word will not. This would be useful in sorting out a syntactically
valid alphabetic string such as R-A-T-E-N-T from actual valid words.
To summarize the above, the computer will have the ability to distinguish
from a given numeric string, the alphabetic string which the caller had in
mind. The computer achieves this by analysis of the redundancy in the
English language and by the analysis of the closed data set of subject
matter appropriate to the given telephone number which was called.
In addition to the computer's ability to distinguish the meaning of a
numeric string and to search its memory for those alphabetic strings
appropriate to the given telephone number, another capability is
achievable by the computer due to the nature of the telephone system. When
a telephone call is placed, the telephone central has the ability to
detect the caller's telephone number. This is why automatic dialing
(without operator assistance) is possible and "AMA" (Automatic Message
Accounting) can be achieved by the computer.
The telephone company has in its computer memory banks the geographical
location of every central office. For example, for telephone number
609/397-2619, the telephone company computer has a pair of horizontal and
vertical constants called H-V which are equivalent to the latitude and
longitude correct to about one minute of the central office at 609/397.
Therefore, when a call is placed, the computer knows the geographical
location of the source. So, for many kinds of information bank questions,
such as, "Where is the nearest dry cleaner?", the computer can answer
without any specific input by the caller because it knows the caller's
geographic location as a function of the telephone exchange from which the
call was placed. This analysis of geographic location and request for
information represents a wide range of currently implemented information
services such as dealer information supplied in response to
"Where-to-buy-it" questions.
In addition to the telephone company's knowledge of the geographic location
of the source of the telephone call, the situation of the telephone
company with respect to spinning off its operating companies provides an
opportunity for independent information service providers.
The telephone company currently provides information services called
"936"or "Dial-It" services, such as, weather (936-1212) and time
(936-1818). These services provide the same number nation-wide for a given
service. That is, 936-1212 is the number in New York, San Francisco or
Philadelphia for the weather. Therefore, having a nationally advertised
telephone number which is constant throughout the country, one can have
national advertising referenced to the data bases which are provided by
the service.
For example, analogous to the weather service and time service, the
invention permits establishment of a telephone service to provide current
stock quotations. It is assumed that this type of service would be
provided by organizations not associated with the telephone operating
companies. It is assumed that the operating companies will deliver a
service of a "976"nature, bill the caller, and remit to the information
provider a portion of the charge made to the caller. As an example,
"976-FILM" could be a service to provide callers with the name, address
and show time of the nearest movie theater which is playing a movie whose
title the caller would keyboard in the numeric fashion. Perhaps the most
important application of this technique would be to provide an interface
between information providers and those people who do not have a computer
terminal. Such providers may include, for example, a company supplying
stock quotations; or perhaps a company that will advise the nearest
location where a particular movie is playing.
As an interface between the callers without computer terminals and the
information providers, this computer system receives calls from the
"Touch-tone" telephones and translates them into data which appears to the
information provider as if it had been received from a computer terminal.
The data is then sent along to the designated information provider
company. When the information provider company provides the output data in
digital format which is intended for transmission to a computer terminal,
the computer system receives such data and translates it into a vocal
response back to the caller. For example, if a caller on a telephone were
to ask the name of the nearest theater playing "Casablanca", this data
would be relayed to the information provider that has previously put up
the data bank. The answer, e.g., Rialto, is provided digitally by the data
base owner and is intended for transmission to a computer terminal.
Instead of going to a computer terminal, the characters R-I-A-L-T-0 would
be sent to the proper node of the interface computer network system and
there transformed into the vocal response "RIALTO" which would then be
relayed via telephone to the caller.
A problem arises in the use of a system of this nature to answer inquiries
generated by advertising, such as, "Where to buy an Arrow.RTM. Shirt"? The
computer can respond, for example, "J. C. Penney, Quakerbridge Mall" in
response to the keyboarding of "Arrow.RTM. Shirt"
(2-7-7-6-9-*-7-4-4-7-8-#) without any difficulty but the problem is that
the advertiser wants to know which advertising medium generated the
inquiry (for purposes of advertising dollar allocation).
This is readily solved in practicing the invention by programming the
computer to initiate a dialogue such as:
Computer: "Thank you for requesting the name of your nearest
Arrow.RTM.Shirt dealer. Please keyboard the name of the medium in which
you saw the advertisement."
Caller "TIME MAGAZINE". (8-4-6-3-*-6-2-4-2-1-4-6-3-#)
The computer is thereby enabled to decode the string for the name of the
medium and provide the data for the advertiser.
An advantage of this system is substitution of low-cost digital data
transmission, such as is available from several X.25 networks, for
expensive voice transmission. The usage of voice-to-digital computer
network nodes allows substitution of digital data transmission for inward
WATS for information dissemination.
This discussion has assumed that a telephone having a key pad is required
to communicate with the system. If such is not available, hand-held tone
generators are available at relatively low cost.
In the event that keying errors are made on the tone pads, the computer
system would be able to perceive the error quickly. Various techniques
currently employed in the telecommunications industry would be used to
decipher the caller's intent.
One procedure, known as "answer back analysis", can detect errors and
determine the caller's intent in over 99% of the errors. In case of a
dubious decision, the computer can always ask the caller his intent.
This disclosure deals with being able to have the telephone supply numeric
inputs that can be interpreted by a computer to be alpha-numeric without
any prior operator training. Also, no special training such as multiple
keying of the telephone pad is required for alpha-numeric.
It will be necessary to add a speech synthesizer to each of the
conventional access processors in order to have computer generated voice
output back to the telephone that made the original query. Thus, the
access processor will consist of the following sections:
Disc file with "Banner" messages
Concentrator/Deconcentrator
Multiplexer/Demultiplexer
Protocol Conversion
Speech synthesizer to serve a number of ports
Capability of handling several thousand ports
Packet assembler/disassembler
Referring again to the drawing, in a typical situation the input message is
directed from the telephone instrument (and in particular the transmitting
components thereof) to an access processor 16. The access processor reads
the pulses transmitted and converts them to a digital protocol, that is,
the analog waveform of the transmitted pulses is converted to a digital
form in which it becomes a stream of binary "bits", known in the computer
art as "digital protocol". The conversion is effected by circuitry well
known in the computer art and basic to present-day computer structure, in
which such conversions are routinely made in the analog waveforms received
from the keyboards of computer terminals. At the access processor there is
also provided local data storage, identified in FIG. 1 as "response
storage" and designated 26 in that figure of the drawing. If the inquiry
is such that it can be answered by utilizing the data maintained at the
local access processor storage, the access processor conducts a dialogue,
that is, it responds to the inquiry, utilizing pre-packaged messages from
the local audio storage. This utilizes a voice synthesizer 28 which is
converted from the digital message protocol, and is transmitted from the
access processor to the receiver of the telephone instrument.
In the event that response to the inquiry cannot be made utilizing local
storage of data at the access processor, the access processor transmits
the message in digital form to the main frame computer, via the network
shown in FIG. 2. Here there is called into use the
concentrator/deconcentrator; or the multiplexer/demultiplexer; or the
packet assembler/disassembler.
With the digitally encoded message transmitted from the access processor to
the data base computer 20, there is transmitted the calling number, and
the called number. These go along with the numerically coded inquiry data.
Upon receipt of this message at the computer, the computer, by reference to
its data bank or base 22, transmits alphabetic data to the access
processor for conversion by voice synthesizer 28 to the synthetic voice
mode as a response to the input query. And, the computer may also transmit
coded data to control the dialogue with reference to local audio storage
at the access processor.
The computer, at the same time, as shown in FIG. 1, transmits data to the
telephone company's billing computer 24, which receives this data and
utilizes it for the purpose of generating a bill chargeable to the
subscriber who has made the inquiry.
There will now be described the subject matter added by this
continuation-in-part application, and not disclosed in the parent
application.
FIGS. 3-14 are flow charts illustrative of the inventive concept as applied
to a telephone company automatic directory assistance system, and in
particular, a system of directory assistance for residential listings.
The system is organized in a modular fashion, and the processing is
controlled by tables. In this manner, a new application such as telephone
company "Yellow Pages" data base access can be built primarily by
construction of a new table.
There are two processes involved in the system herein disclosed--data base
update and inquiry processing. The two processes interact so as to
facilitate the orderly processing of inquiries. The data base update
examines selected fields in the new records which are to be added to the
data base or selected fields which are to be changed.
In the example of automatic directory assistance for residential listings,
the special fields which the data base update subsystem processes are the
last name, first name or initial, middle name or initial, street name, and
city name. Each of these fields is converted to its "Touch-tone" numeric
equivalent".
The "Touch-tone" numeric equivalent of a letter in a field is taken from
the "Touch-tone" buttons on the telephone, viz., the A and B and C are
converted to a "2", the D and E and F are converted to a "3", and so on
for the buttons 2 through 9.
The letters Q and Z, which do not appear on the "Touch-tone" key pad, are
assumed to be on the "7"and "9"buttons respectively so that the "7"button
is by convention PQRS and the "9"button is WXYZ.
The numeric fields and their corresponding alphabetic fields are separated
by a # character which acts as the terminating character of each field.
For example, the directory entry for "JONES JOHN ADAM MAIN TRENTON" (last
name, first name, middle name, street name, city name) in TRENTON would be
represented in the data base as
56637#5646#2326#6246#8736866#JONES#JOHN#ADAM#MAIN#TRENTON#.
When users attempt to gain access to the data base, they will do so by
keying the "Touch-tone" digits, which will be compared by a computer
process to the numeric equivalents of the alphabetic characters. It is
only necessary for the users to press one button, once, to represent one
letter. For example, to input the letter "A", the user will press the
"2"button, once
The computer process does not immediately recognize the "2" as being
intended to represent the letter "A" but the concatenation of multiple
digits will eliminate ambiguities in the entered string of numeric digits
so as to decode their alphabetic equivalents. The buttons "2" through "9"
can be considered as a number system to the base eight. The full alphabet
can be considered as a number system to the base 26.
Even though eight is much less than 26, it is clear from examining the
above listing example containing 24 "Touch-tone" numeric equivalent digits
that eight raised to the 24th power is enormously greater than the total
number of entries in, for example, the Trenton, N.J. telephone book.
Therefore, the system of representing people, objects, names or titles
using the base of 8 instead of the more familiar 26 is sufficient to
identify an individual data element such as a telephone book entry.
It is also pertinent to state that the 26 letter alphabet and the words it
composes are full of redundancy. The vowels, for example, are needed to
make the words pronounceable, but are not needed to differentiate one word
from another. This is the basis of a common shorthand system, in which one
writes words without writing vowels because it is known that the vowels
are redundant, and that the words can be later recognized when
transcribing the dictation without requiring the vowels to be present.
The system comprising the present invention also recognizes the possibility
of a "collision", that is a word or a name which has the same "Touch-tone"
numeric equivalent as another word or name. An example is the names OHLER
AND MILES. Both have the same "Touch-tone" numeric equivalent, 64537.
During the development of the inventive concepts herein disclosed, an
attempt was made to assess the probability of this occurrence in a large
system such as a telephone company directory assistance system.
A conversion of 12,556 surnames to their "Touch-tone" numeric equivalents
produced only eight collisions, and even these could have been avoided by
entering the first names.
These were "single" collisions, i.e., only two names were involved in each
collision. Therefore, it may be assumed that although collisions may
occur, they are rare enough so as not to interfere with the practicality
of the present "dial-by-name" system. The processing recognizes when a
collision occurs and treats it accordingly, thereby establishing viably
the capability of "Touch-tone" numeric equivalents to identify data base
entries uniquely and practicably.
The data base update system maintains the listing file in subfiles
hereinafter called "filettes". A filette has the property of being less
than or equal in size to a buffer area maintained in Random Access Memory
(RAM) during inquiry processing. The inquiry program maintains one buffer
per telephone line. Individual buffers are not dedicated to individual
telephone lines but are assigned to lines during processing as required.
An individual filette in a particular RAM buffer may serve multiple
telephone lines simultaneously, should multiple telephone lines be in use,
for the purpose of searching for entries which are all in the same
filette.
The filette boundaries which are the first and last records in the filette
are loaded into RAM together with their disk addresses and act as indices
to the totality of filettes resident in the disk file. While the user is
entering "Touch-tone" digits, each digit is appended to the string of
previously entered digits.
With each new digit appended to the string, the inquiry program compares
the string to the filette boundaries in RAM to determine whether the
string is long enough so as to identify uniquely the filette containing
the target listing. When the proper filette for the string has been
identified, the filette is loaded into RAM from disk (unless it has been
previously loaded into some other buffer because of processing a previous
inquiry) and subsequently the individual listing entries of the filette
are examined in RAM after each new digi | | |
