DE1524398

1,121,023. Character recognition. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. 20 April, 1966 [27 April, 1965], No. 17229/66. Heading G4R. Character recognition apparatus comprises means for scanning a character and for recognizing features of said character, means for indicating that part of the character has been displaced and has not been scanned, means for searching for the displaced part, means for scanning said displaced part on discovery and for recognizing the features of the displaced part, and means for combining all the recognized features and producing an output signal repre. senting the complete character. Recognition is based on the slope of the character (discretized to the compass rose points) in particular areas of a 4 x 5 matrix encompassing the character, concurrence of such slope and position features being sometimes required for particular minimum time intervals. The size of the matrix is normalized by a preliminary scan around the character. For the recognition scan, a horizontally-progressing search sawtooth is executed by the scanner (C.R.T.) until a part of the character is encountered, when the outline is followed round. If recognition does not take place, but the features detected suggest that the outline was that of the sickle portion of the number 5, a further search sawtooth is executed to search for the slash of the 5, presumed detached. For this purpose the sawtooth is elevated above the position of the first sawtooth by adding the vertical deflection voltage of the latter on encountering the character to the maximum upwards vertical increment voltage needed in following the outline plus a half volt. If and when encountered, the slash is followed round and recognized by its line endings being positioned in the left-most and right-most columns of the matrix, the line endings being recognized by the rapid change from one slope to the opposite slope. Alternatively, if the slash is encountered before the sickle, this will have happened in the preliminary scan mentioned (for selecting the matrix size), and positive and negative vertical and horizontal maximum excursion voltages used therein and stored will indicate that a slash was encountered (as the " character ") by virtue of the horizontal extension of the shape exceeding the vertical, and the vertical extension being less than a preset amount. These conditions, together with the slash signal from the previous circuitry, set a slash latch. The sickle is then found in the routine sea