| 摘要 |
<p>A system for the metering of encrypted postage and similar indicia includes a device (32) for printing such indicia and a device (34) for reading such indicia. The printing is accomplished with a bar-code printer driven by signals obtained from a keyboard (48) and from an encryption circuit. The reading is accomplished with a bar-code reader to retreive the characters, and permit the comparison of the separated coded data with a reference code to determine the accuracy of the printed material. Both the data and the code area imprinted by a bar-code indicia, a portion of the code being set aside for the data and a portion of the bar-code being set aside for encryption purposes. Thereby, the two portions can readily be separated to allow for automatic reading of the bar code for extraction of the message, while also allowing for automatic verification (54) by use of the encrypted material.</p> |
