Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!ron@BRL.ARPA From: ron@BRL.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: OCR and Checks Message-ID: <1873@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 7-Jun-83 20:23:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1873 Posted: Tue Jun 7 20:23:00 1983 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jun-83 18:27:28 EDT Lines: 24 From: Ron NatalieOne of the electrical surplus mail order places (like H&R or someone) had OCR wands for some low (<$100) price. They claimed that these were the same as the Sears ones and the picture provided was a dead ringer for it. I would probably guess that the electronics that came with it not as extensive (or not at all) as the $2000 package from the first company. A reasonable toy for people who have the initiative to build their own interface. OCR would be a very nice thing to have on a personal computer because it is so much easier produced than bar codes (all though the hardware to read it is more complex). In addition OCR can be read by humans easily, unlike bar codes. You can get OCR balls for your selectric and for most of the wheel printers. Bar codes require somekind of medium resoulution plotting (I've seen it done on Printronix dot matrix printers) that may be a little too rich for the average home printer. -Ron P.S. I used to have a friend who always printed his correspondance with an OCR diablo wheel because he wanted people to be aware that it came from a computer.