Typical OCR machine

- Scanning resolution ~ 400 dpi

- Reads 60 sheets per minute

An Optical Character Reader is a combination of scanner and special software that converts printed text into electronic ASCII characters.

The scanning part of the device is much like a standard scanner except there are often additional mechanical parts to handle multiple sheets.

Example of using optical character input:

• Converting paper records into electronic files.
• Scanning invoices into spreadsheets

Advantage:

• Allows paper records to be converted into electronic format

Disadvantage:

• Conversion is often not perfect and so someone has to read the results and correct them.
• Can be slow (unless an expensive system is used).