The sorting machine NAS-100, provided in 1997, realized the “route construction division”scheme, which sorted mail items in the delivery route sequence for individual delivery person, by reading seven-digit postal codes and detailed address information together. This model switched from the dispatch division scheme to the “delivery division”scheme, which sorted mail items in the delivery divisions corresponding to each individual postal delivery person. In 1989, the TR-17 mail sorting machine came out with the capability to recognize addresses written with kanji characters, for the first time in the world. In the 1980s, the NAS-80 mail sorting machine made it possible to read printed postal codes so that mail items with either printed or handwritten postal codes could be sorted together.
This scheme was followed by NEC to provide the automatic postal code sorting machine of NAS-5B in June 1969. By reading postal codes written in red boxes printed upper side on postcards, these products realized the“dispatch division”scheme, which sorted mail items by the positions of post offices that provided the collection and delivery service. These products recognized free handwritten numbers for the first time in the world. The first commercially available products were Toshiba’s TR-3 and TR-4 mail sorting machines in July 1968. The first products of domestic OCR devices were motivated by the postal code concept that the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications at that time introduced as part of the postal service automation. Internationally, the development of character recognition technology started in before or after of 1900, and the first OCR product that read printed characters got available around 1950.
From the standpoint of the user, an OCR device is a labor-saving equipment that can automatically input large amounts of text without the manual labor of a typist using a keyboard. From the standpoint of the connected computer, an OCR device is a character input device that takes the place of a keyboard. An OCR device scans paper media optically, extracts an image, and identifies and recognizes characters in the image.