Computer development revolutionizes genealogy
It is GEDCOM and it stands for “GE”nealogy “D”ata “COM”munications. Simply explained, it is a word coined by hackers to describe the language all the various computer users have adopted to communicate with each other.
About 25 years ago, when computer technology was in its infancy, there was no such word. Of course, in those days nobody had a need for it. The explosion that was to make genealogy the world’s second most popular hobby (gardening is first) was in its infancy.
Putting words on a computer for comparison purposes held little significance. Genealogists had been using pen and pencil to put words on paper since Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg developed the printing press about the time Columbus discovered America.
Of course, in those days, there were more spoken dialects than even the dedicated monks of medieval monasteries could master. They labored over their manuscripts from dawn to sunset.
But, when a written language and movable type were developed, it revolutionized the methods of recording genealogical data. It was only a matter of time before a curious public began to catch up with the scientists of the day.
Then, about 15 years ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormons, came up with something totally new — a standard data file they called GEDCOM. There was one major problem. Not only was it new, but it could be read only by the software which had been developed for itself within the church.
However, give a computer buff a problem and he or she will quickly find a solution. Over time, other genealogy programs were developed that had the ability to read and write GEDCOM files. And today, GEDCOM files are interchangeable among all the different computer programs on the commercial market.
As a result, it is possible to use a number of competing programs to search various family records or exchange data you have collected with that of a distant cousin who uses a completely different language.
Of course, problems remain. All people do not interpret information the same way. And the development of multimedia to transfer scanned images, sound clips or even movies from one file to another presents a new set of challenges. The ability to transfer GEDCOM information has been further complicated by the interchange of languages. Imagine translating Chinese to German to Japanese to Spanish and to English. The resulting copy probably would prove difficult to read.
GEDCOM is not a finished product, but it represents a major step forward among genealogists. Thank the Mormons for putting everything on a comparable base and moving us ahead to the next level of communication.
Meade is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Burnet County Genealogical Society and the Kingsland Genealogical Society. His column appears in The Daily Tribune on the first and third Sunday of each month and in The Picayune the following week. You can e-mail him at: www.Leemeaderoots@aol.com.