Chapter 15. How Scanners Capture Words and Images

How Scanners Capture Words and Images

THE problem with computers from the very start was that before they could do all their marvelous tricks with math and information, you had to input some data with which they could work. Whole warehouses full of people were hired to sit at a keyboard for eight hours a day to input—the new word for typing—information that, for the most part, they were reading off forms onto which other people had already input information about themselves.

What’s wrong with this picture? How could it be that we were capable of creating machines that could do in minutes (seconds!) what would take a university full of ...

Get How Computers Work, Ninth Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.