Patent Document ID: 4481665
Application ID: 06331310

Base Claim:
1. A method for facilitating the automatic recognition of optically scanned and read characters from within separate sequentially scanned blocks of written information, said method comprising the steps of: predetermining the classification of a first block of written information and a next successive block of written information of said separate sequentially scanned blocks according to the types of information contained therein; optically and sequentially scanning said separate blocks of information and generating a representative output signal for each of said characters; retrievally storing said output signals; reading each of the stored output signals in the order scanned and determining the end of said first block of information and the beginning of said next successive block of information; classifying each of the read output signals of said first block in accordance with the predetermined classification of said first block; and processing the output signals of said first block by a character recognition circuit for identifying the characters within said first block.

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Claim 5:
5. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of determining the ends of said first block of information and the beginning of said next successive blocks of information comprises: comparing the gap length between adjacent characters to the average gap length of all characters, and detecting the presence of a punctuation mark between two adjacent characters.