This technology is mainly used in the banking industry. It's sole purpose is to read information, for instances, account numbers, off of printed documents. MIRC characters are printed with a special magnectic ink or toner. This ink is usually contained with iron oxide. When a machine decodes a MIRC text, it firsts magnetizes the ink in the plane of the paper. Then the paper are passed over a MIRC read head. As each character passes over the head, it creates a waveform that is easily identified by the system which allows the characters to be read.
Optical-Character Recognition
OCR is the mechanical or electronic translation of an image of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into a machine-editable text. OCR is basically a field of research of pattern recognition, artificial intelligence and computer vision. However, the focus of OCR has shifted to implementations of techniques that have been proven. OCR term has been broadened to include digital image processing as well due to the scarcity of applications that survived true optical techniques.
Optical-Mark Recognition
Optical-Mark Recognition or, more famously known by the students as, OMR is the process of capturing human-marked data from a document form such as surveys or tests. Most traditional OMR machines work with a scanner that shines a beam of light onto the form paper. The reflectivity at predetermined positions is then used to detect the marked areas because they reflect less light than blank paper. OMR is commonly applied in examinations where the lecturer need to mark a large number of students. This will increase the lecturer's effectiveness in getting the papers marked faster. There are also other applications such as community surveys, consumer surveys, evaluations and so on.
Dot Matrix Printer
Dot Matrix Printers are printers used by computers that has a print head that runs back and forth or up and down. It creates an impact on the paper, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon on the paper. This application is similiar to that of a typewriter. Each character is made of a matrix of dots. The advantage of this is that it enables the end user to print out numerous fonts and arbitrary graphics. Due to the mechanical pressure, the second advantage of this is that it can print out carbon copies and carbonless copies.
Plotters
Plotters are vector graphics printing devices for computers that print graphical plot. There are two basic types of plotters, which are the pen plotters and electrostatic plotters. The pen plotter print by moving a pen across the surface of a paper. This means that this type of plotter is restricted to line graphics, rather than raster graphics as with other printers. The primary purpose of plotters were to print out texts because it is fairly easy to control and it doesn't require a lot of time. However, now pen plotters have become obsolete and have been replaced by large-format inkjet printers and LED toner based printers. Although they are raster devices, these printers still oftenly known as plotters.
Photo Printer
A photo printer is an inkjet printer that is specifically designed to produce high quality digital photos on photo paper. These printers are known to have high number of nozzles and are capable of printing droplets as small as 1 picoliter. These printers have increased in popularity, in conjuction with the increased use of digital cameras. Before the rise of digital cameras, photo printers were used only by professionals. What basically sets photo printers apart from standard inkjet printers is their use of additional cartridges, either speciality photo inks or just variations on the standard color cartridges.
Portable Printer
A portable printer is basically a printer for travellers. It is small in size and much more easier to carry around for frequent travellers who loves to go for long trips. Some of these adventurers would want to print some documents or information along the way and this is where the portable printer come in. A portable printer does not produce better quality than a standard printer, however, given the circumstances, a portable printer does have its advantages.
Fax Machine
Fax machines are telecommunication technology that is used to transfer copies of documents, using affordable devices operating over the telephone network. In terms of sending documents, it has the advantage over snail mail due to the speed that the reciever recieves the document. However, the lack of quality of the documents automatically delegates it to below e-mails. A standard fax machine usually consists of an image scanner, a modem, and a printer.
Multifunctional Devices
A multifunctional device or MFD is an office machine which combines the functionality of several office machines into one, in order to have a smaller footprint or a small business setting, or to provide centralized document management,distribution or production in a large-office setting. Today, MFD are available from any printer manufacturers. They are designed for all sorts of uses such as home uses, small business and so on. Naturally, the costs of the MFD varies according to various case uses. However, they all generally have the same functions which are print, scan, fax and photocopy.
Internet Telephones
An Internet phone service uses the Internet, instead of old-fashioned phone lines, to send voice projections. In most cases, you just have to plug your current telephone into a small box that your Internet phone company provides to you. Then the box plugs into your broadband connection. Just as with regular telephone service, you pick up the phone to get a dial tone and press numbers on the keypad to call the person you want to talk with. And as with a regular telephone, you can call anybody in the world who has a phone. Alternatively, some services have softphones: your computer becomes your telephone, and you talk through a handset or a headset plugged into USB ports.
Telephony
Telephony emcompasses the general use of equipment to provide voice communication over distances, specifically by connecting telephones to one another. Originally, telephones were connected directly together in pairs. Each user had separate telephones wired to the various places he might wish to communicate with. This is severly inconvenient when people wanted to talk to many other telephones, thus, the telephone exchange was invented. Each telephone could then be connected to other local ones, thus inventing the local loop and the telephone call. Soon, nearby exchanges were connected by trunk lines, and eventually distant ones were as well.
