The IBM 1975 optical page reader: part I: system design

The IBM 1975 Optical Page Reader, specially built for the Social Security Administration, reads over 200 fonts from quarterly employer reports printed by electric and manual typewriters, business machines, and high-speed printers. Since the SSA has no control over the means used by employers to prepare the reports, many variations in print quality present. This paper discusses the problems involved in planning and developing a system to read these reports and summarizes the design of the specialized video signal processing circuits and the character recognition logic that are used in the system. Two companion papers treat the latter topics in more detail. Also discussed in the paper is a management information system that permitted detailed analysis of experimental data and accelerated the development process.