Patent ID: 7258337

Claim:
A system for feeding and transporting documents, each document having a leading edge and a trailing edge, the system comprising: a feeder stage including a hopper assembly and a feeder wherein the feeder acts to feed documents singly, in order, from a stack of documents in the hopper assembly, the hopper assembly including a hopper floor having a near end at the feeder and a far end away from the feeder, the hopper floor carrying the document stack; the hopper assembly further including a flag/flag block arrangement providing a force to move the documents along the hopper floor toward the feeder and to feed a document with a presentation force; wherein the flag block includes a horizontal element for concentrating the presentation force at a desired position at the feeder, the horizontal element having depth away from the feeder such that the documents are essentially free to expand, thereby concentrating the presentation force at a desired location while reducing drag forces on the fed document; a transport stage downstream of the feeder stage for receiving the fed documents; and wherein the flag block includes a vertical element attached below the horizontal element at the feeder end of the horizontal element, the vertical element supporting a last document in the document stack.