Patent ID: 7665394

Claim:
A ticket dispensing device dispensing tickets from a plurality of elongated strips of tickets in which the tickets are delineated from one another by lines of weakness, comprising in combination: a plurality of supply locations each configured to store a respective separate one of the elongated strips of tickets; a plurality of ticket transport devices, each one of the of the ticket transport devices in communication with a corresponding one of the supply locations and configured to a) transport tickets from the one of said plurality of elongated strips of tickets stored in the corresponding supply location to a shared separator device, and b) operate independently of the other said transport devices so that only one type of ticket is transported to the ticket separator at a time; the shared separator device adjacent said transport devices and configured to receive a strip of said tickets from each said ticket transport devices; an elongated rotary separator member spanning the paths taken by each of said strips received by the shared separator device; and a drive device rotating said separator member to separate one ticket from another in at least one of said strips, after the strip is transported to the shared separator device.