Electronic system employing plural processing stations for issuing airline boarding passes while effecting seat assignments, and generally for parcelling elements of an ordered set

Claim 1

In combination in a digital electrical system for issuing airline boarding passes and for effecting seat assignments in an aircraft, said aircraft seats being identified by a zone designation, a row within a zone, and a seat within a row, comprising a central processor, at least one console, plural conductor system buss means connecting said processor with each of said consoles, each of said consoles including a matrix array of lamps, a plurality of zone selector switches, a plurality of row selector switches, a plurality of seat selector switches, and a mode selector switch, console selector means for sequentially and cyclically selecting each of said consoles, a mode register, means for encoding the mode selector switch position at a selected console, means for inserting said mode switch encoding signals in said mode register, zone, row and seat registers in said central processor, means for inserting signals representative of siad zone and seat switches assemblies in said console in said zone, row and seat registers, respectively, a circulating memory for storing and cyclically presenting at output terminals thereof signals indicative of the availability of all aircraft seats, a system oscillator and counter for identifying the information present at said circulating memory output, and means responsive to an aircraft zone identified by said zone switch means for illuminating said lamp matrix array in accordance with said stored availability information in an aircraft zone selected by said zone selector switches.