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## 2 Input Devices ### Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) Readers Magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) readers are mainly used in the banking industry to read data on cheques. Bank cheques have the following information encoded on them: * The cheque number * The bank branch number *...

## 2 Input Devices ### Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) Readers Magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) readers are mainly used in the banking industry to read data on cheques. Bank cheques have the following information encoded on them: * The cheque number * The bank branch number * The customer's account number After the customer has written a cheque, the bank also encodes the amount of money onto the cheque using an encoding machine. This machine prints the amount onto the cheque in a special magnetic ink that contains iron oxide. The cheques can then be read by an MICR reader. As the document passes into the MICR reader, the shapes of the characters are recognised electronically. When the cheque is cashed, the bank transfers the money from the customer's account to the account of the person or business who has cashed the cheque. ### Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) Readers An optical mark recognition (OMR) reader detects the position of dark patches on a sheet of paper. The documents to be read have empty boxes pre-printed on them. The user makes pencil or ink marks in the appropriate boxes. The intensity of the reflected light from these marks on the form is detected by the OMR reader. This is sometimes called mark sensing. The computer records the positions of the marks and analyses them to determine the meaning of the data. OMR readers are used mainly in assessing multiple-choice examinations or questionnaires given out by market researchers. Another huge application of OMR is in electronic lotteries, where participants can quickly and easily mark their selection of numbers on a machine-readable ticket.