Patent ID: 7672499

Claim:
A U.S. currency processing device for receiving a stack of U.S. currency bills and rapidly processing all the bills in the stack, the device comprising: an input receptacle positioned to receive a stack of U.S. bills; at least one output receptacle positioned to receive bills, only one of the at least one output receptacle being an output receptacle for receiving denominated bills; a transport mechanism comprising a transport drive motor and transport rollers, the transport mechanism being configured to transport the bills, one at a time, from the input receptacle to the at least one output receptacle along a transport path; and a denomination discriminating unit comprising a detector positioned along the transport path between the input receptacle and the at least one output receptacle and comprising a processor, the detector generating a characteristic information output signal in response to detected characteristic information, the characteristic information output signal being electrically coupled to the processor, the processor receiving the characteristic information output signal and generating a denomination signal, the discriminating unit being configured to denominate and count bills of a plurality of U.S. denominations; wherein the device is configured to deliver any bill that has been denominated to the one and only one of the at least one output receptacle including bills of a plurality of U.S. denominations; and wherein the device is configured (a) to halt the transport mechanism when the denomination of a bill is not determined by the denomination discriminating unit and (b) to permit the transport mechanism to be restarted after being halted while maintaining a cumulative value of bills in the stack which have been denominated and delivered to the denominated bill output receptacle.