this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
137 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37360 readers
172 users here now
Rumors, happenings, and innovations in the technology sphere. If it's technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
OCR existed long before the 486. AFAIK it was already used in the 70's or 80's to scan mail and presort them based on the postcode. I remember that postcards had light orange boxes (presumably because this color was invisible to B/W scanners?) with dots inside where you where supposed to write the postcode numbers in.
Doing OCR in a very specific format, in a small specific area, using a set of only 9 characters, and having a list of all possible results, is not really the same problem at all.
🤔
I meant OCR of arbitrary printed or faxed text, which really only became feasible for home users in the 1990s. There were professional, but often very limited, solutions earlier than that, of course.