What is a GEDCOM Data file and how to make one ?

When Genealogical programs were first being written, it became obvious that information that one researcher had accumulated required hours of input by another research just to add the data to his Genealogical Program. When databases went from a few hundred records to tens of thousands of records, the manual importation of this data became a major stumbling block to researchers.

Standards of data were created by software vendors that united on the concept of how to transmit large databases either by modem or on some form of media (diskettes). While this standard is still being debated, the first GEDCOM files were being created which allowed for the virtual instantaneous importation of large or small amounts of Genealogical data into various software programs. This saved hundreds and thousands of hours of manual data entry.