What is the purpose for those old robot-y looking computer letters? I believe that I’ve only seen this font used for commercial use, although for computer-related events and such (moreso when DOS was big).
Not sure exactly but I know that they use that font on checks so computer can read the account numbers.
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They were originally designed for optical character recognition. In the old days, the technology and algorithms to scan and recognize printed characters were rather primative. The font is designed so that no two characters could be confused for one another (hence, the apparently spurrious ‘dots’ in some characters).
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BTW - Hi Opal!
I believe you’re referring to the MICR characters used on checks? The purpose is for character reading, and was developed prior ro advanced computer technology to allow automated readers to get the routing, account and check serial numbers quickly. The characters are chosen to have a shape that uses a unique quantity of magnetic ink for each, so that the reader can identify characters simply by measuring the level of magnetism for each one.
Close. MICR stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. Back when this system was developed, OCR was largely unheard of. Probably it was being worked on experimentally, but it wouldn’t have been very reliable back then. MICR was developed some time in the 70’s, IIRC.
Back in the days when optical scanners were brand new, they had trouble distinguishing some letters from others, so the OCR-B font was created to enable documents to be scanned into computers with no errors.
I remember working on a document conversion project where paper records were re-typed onto special forms using an OCR typewriter. Remember, this is in the days when most computer data entry was done using punched cards.
With more sophisticated data entry methods, this use has become obsolete, but it is still used for check processing (using magnetic ink).
To expand on Q.E.D.'s post, they were created/chosen to not only be computer-recognizable, but near enough to “normal” characters so humans wouldn’t have a problem reading them at the same time.
Compare barcodes, which are primarily computer-readable.
OTOH, if Joe K is referring to very early computer text screens, not MICR characters, those were chunky & blocky because the best resolution available on TVs and thru computer-video cards was poor. Serif fonts like Times Roman or the one you are probably reading now could not have been rendered well for consumer-priced hardware. The compromise was large, fuzzy letters and simple (“gothic”) font shapes.
A little earlier, actually. I recall working at a big city bank in 1962 and being shown a demonstration of this (we sorted checks using IBM “proof” machines at the time, all manual-entry). According to About.com, the MICR check-reading concept was developed in the 1950’s. A public demo was given in 1955 and a commercial application was ready in 1959.
Personal side note: I was asked to head the new “Computer Processing Department for Checks” at the bank, but I declined and quit to go to college instead. If only…?