computer tool that recognizes typed or printed characters (alphabetic and numeric) on paper so they can be recorded on disk or magnetic tape. Optical character recognition can also read foreign characters (e.g., Japanese).
the recognition of printed or handwritten characters in an image of a piece of paper. OCR software is commonly used with scanners so that information received on paper will not have to be retyped into the computer. A difficulty is that the computer usually cannot recognize letters and digits with complete certainty, so it has to make intelligent guesses based on the spellings of knownwords. For example, if you type "chack" anOCRdevice is likely to read it as "check." Obviously, OCR has difficulty distinguishing l from 1 or O from 0; so do humans if they don't know the context. Information obtained through OCR should be carefully checked for accuracy.
automatic computer input process whereby the computer scanner is able to read printed symbols, numbers, and letters, and convert them to electronic data. There are various types of scanners, such as fixed-head scanners that must have the scan line fed directly to them, or hand-held wand scanners that are manually passed in front of the scan line. Some scanners, such as those used in grocery stores or by the U.S. Postal Service, read a code consisting of vertical bars of varying height or width. Other scanners, such as those used by banks to process checks, can read alphanumeric characters. Wand scanners work best with bar codes, because it doesn't matter whether the position of the scan head along the height of each bar varies from one end of the code to the other. The scannability of alphanumeric characters is greatly affected by the position of the scan head, because the characters are not the same from top to bottom.
Scanning enables retailers to maintain a "perpetual inventory," that is, an up-to-the-minute record of goods sold. The U.S. Postal Service scans ZIP codes and barcodes in order to process mail faster. Direct marketers use scanners to enter orders and to build computerized lists from hard copy documents. Scanners are also used to accumulate statistics about redeemed cents-off coupons.
