An optical reader is a device found within most
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
scanners that captures visual information and translates the image into
digital
Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits.
Technology and computing Hardware
*Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals
** Digital camera, which captures and stores digital ...
information the computer is capable of understanding and displaying.
An example of optical readers are
marksense systems for
election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...
s where voters mark their choice by filling a rectangle, circle, or oval, or by completing an arrow. After the voting a tabulating device reads the votes using "dark mark logic", whereby the computer selects the darkest mark within a given set as the intended choice or vote.
See also
*
Digital paper
*
Optical character recognition
Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...
*
Optical scan voting system
An optical scan voting system is an electronic voting system and uses an optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and tally the results.
History Marksense systems
While mark sense technology dates back to the 1930s and optical mark recogn ...
*
Optical mark recognition
Optical mark recognition (also called optical mark reading and OMR) is the process of reading information that people mark on surveys, tests and other paper documents.
OMR is used to read questionnaires, multiple choice examination papers in th ...
References
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Optical devices