Fifty Years Ago .... from the pages of Computer Weekly

4th July 1974 computing, compiled by TNMOC volunteer archivist, Brian Aldous.

A selection of stories from Computer Weekly from 4th July 1974. The full archive of Computer Weekly can be seen at TNMOC, where there are special rolling displays of front pages from 25 and 40 years ago.

The OCR wand casts its spell on the PoS market: The low-cost OCR wand, based on LSI technology, which is being developed by Recognition Equipment, has a wide range of applications with terminals, point-of-sale units, and is also expected to be of interest to banks. The wand is based on a 2.5 mm high solid state LSI chip in its nose which incorporates a 16 by 38 matrix of light sensitive elements. The character being read is illuminated by two adjacent
light bulbs and the reflected light stimulates a pattern of electrical impulses in the LSI matrix. These impulses are accepted by electronics in the wand handle which streams each of the impulses into one of 16 voltage levels, corresponding to one of 16 shades of grey. The wand is linked via a flexible cable to additional electronics, which can be housed in the parent terminal, and which carry out such functions as character recognition using the feature analysis technique, and the assignment of an output code acceptable by the terminal’s logic.  (CW 400 4/7/1974 p25)