杏吧原创

The machine learns to read

The electronics company Solartron revealed last week the progress it has made with a machine that can read ordinary type. The Electronic Reading Automation device can recognise Arabic numerals at a rate of 120 characters per second, and the makers claim that a single machine can read a variety of typefaces even if these are distorted, smudged, defective and misplaced.

The reason behind Solartron鈥檚 research is the appetite of the digital computer. For business purposes a fast computer gobbles up figures faster than hundreds of clerks can feed it, because each number has to be transcribed into a form the computer can assimilate 鈥� codes punched on cards or paper tape, or recorded on magnetic tape. The ERA device makes it possible to feed the computer with original documents such as cheques or invoices.

Solartron claims to have taken a world lead by producing the ERA because other laboratories鈥� attempts have been thwarted by the poor quality of normal type. ERA gets around this by using a flying-spot cathode ray tube to scan the paper, similar to that used to scan motion picture film to make it acceptable for television broadcasts.

Each character is divided into 100 squares and each square is observed by the machine to be either black or white. This gives much more information than is needed in principle, and this redundancy of information is the machine鈥檚 safeguard against faults in the type. For example, the machine deduces that 鈥淚f, of the 100 squares, 12 and 13 or 32 and 33 are black, and so are 22 and 23, while 37 and 38 are white, then the character is a 4鈥�.

The reading speed of ERA can reach 500 characters a second and the unit can be programmed to deal with letters of almost any alphabet. It is expected to cost as much as 拢50,000.

From The New 杏吧原创, 7 March 1957