DATA ENCODING AND DECODING SYSTEMS

摘要

A substrate, particularly a printed document such as an invoice, is provided with machine-readable markings representing data in encoded form. The markings (B), shown enlarged at (C), comprise at least one line of successive characters, each character being defined by a series of localised dots, the series of dots extending perpendicular to the line of characters. Thus, a document may be printed, using a dot matrix printer, with machine-readable marking occupying a small area and representing some of the human-readable information also printed on the document: using a decoder, the recipient of the document may read the machine-readable markings and enter them directly into his computer database.