Information retrieval system and method

Claim 1

AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM FOR SEARCHING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AN ALPHA-NUMERIC DATA BASE PREDICATED UPON ALPHA-NUMERIC WORD QUESTIONS INCLUDING: A FIRST SYSTEM STORAGE AREA WHEREIN THE DATA IS STORED IN ORIGINAL TEXT FORM, EACH WORD OF SAID DATA BEING SEPARATELY ADDRESSABLE, MEANS FOR DETERMINING THE RELATIVE ADDRESS OF EACH WORD IN SAID ORIGINAL DATA BASE, MEANS FOR ALPABETIZING THE DATA BASE TOGETHER WITH THE RELATIVE ADDRESSES, MEANS FOR EXTRACTING ONLY THE RELATIVE ADDRESSES FROM SAID ALPHABETIZED LIST, MEANS FOR STORING SAID EXTRACTED ADDRESS IN A SECOND SYSTEM STORAGE AREA, MEANS FOR STORING AN ORIGINAL TEXT ALPHA-NUMERIC QUESTION WORD GROUP IN ITS ORIGINAL FORMAT IN A THIRD STORAGE AREA, MEANS FOR ASSIGNING RELATIVE ADDRESSES TO THE WORDS OF SAID QUESTION WORD GROUP, MEANS FOR ALPHABETIZING SAID QUESTION WORD GROUP TOGETHER WITH SAID RELATIVE ADDRESSES, MEANS FOR EXTRACTING THE RELATIVE ADDRESSES, SAID ALPHABETIZED LIST OF QUESTION WORDS, MEANS FOR STORING SAID ALPHABETIZED LIST OF ADDRESSES IN A FOURTH SYSTEM STORAGE AREA, MEANS UTILIZING THE ALPHABETIZED LIST OF RELATIVE ADDRESSES IN SAID SECOND THE FOURTH STORAGE SYSTEM AREAS TO EXTRACT QUESTION WORDS AND TEXT WORDS FROM SAID FIRST AND THIRD STORAGE AREAS, MEANS FOR COMPARING THE WORDS SO EXTRACTED FOR MATCHES, MEANS FOR STORING AN INDICATION OF SUCCESSFUL MATCHES IN A FIFTH SYSTEM STORAGE AREA. MEANS RESPONSIVE TO REACHING THE END OF A QUESTION WORD GROUP OF EXAMINE THE RESULTS TABULATED IN SAID FIFTH SYSTEM STORAGE AREA, AND MEANS TO DETERMINE WHETHER A SUCCESSFUL SEARCH AGAINST SAID DATA BASE HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.