The characters of this record are made up of varying numbers of straight bars placed side by side. The bars are in positions selected among equally spaced bar positions. They are arranged in a binary code and bars in alternate positions in the character space may be displaced heightwise with respect to the other bars for further distinction.
A compact code format has marking elements of two distinctive lengths which lie across a set of parallel equal height code zones. The longer of the two lengths exceeds the length of the shorter by twice the height of a code zone, thereby providing a substantial uniformity of separation between all members of the code set.
In order to incorporate information such as Chinese characters in humanly-readable and machine-readable form onto a single character block font a multi-bit and preferably a 14-bit binary code which uniquely identifies each of the more than 10,000 Chinese characters or other information and which is machine-readable has been developed. The 14-bit binary code has been further coded into a machine-readable 7-line code or electronic equivalent thereof which is small enough to be incorporated onto a single character block font together with the humanly-readable character.
A great number of bar codes are recorded in dual directions on a bar code information card. Each bar code is comprised of a plurality of bar symbols juxtaposed in parallel to each other. A plurality of bar codes, constituting one group bar code, are arranged in one direction which is orthogonal to the bar symbol and a plurality of group bar codes are arranged in the other direction in which the bar symbol extends. A great deal of bar-coded information is recognized by transferring the bar code information card in the longitudinal direction of the bar symbol and scanning the bar code orthogonally thereto.
A magnetically encodable envelope insert includes a plurality of detachable portions connected to each other and to a main central portion along weakened lines, and the detachable portions contain code bars so that the word, instruction or other quantity represented by the code bars of the insert may be selectively varied by tearing off from the remainder of the insert selected numbers of the detachable portions. Also a processing mechanism is provided for sorting the inserts according to the coded instructions of the inserts while the inserts remain in their envelopes. The processing mechanism is modularized so that it may be assembled as required to accommodate any given number of different code words or counts capable of being represented by the code bars of the inserts.
Containers, e.g. bottle crates, industrial containers, of a common issue (Fxx1), e.g. a manufacturing series, are provided with a specific marking which indicates that they belong together. The mixing up of the various issues (Fxx1 . . . Fyz1 . . . Fzz2) which occurs during the circulation (Z, RZ) can again be reversed in an automatic sorting process, which makes it possible to sort out a desired sub-quantity (Fxx1) and to subject same to a further process stage (Rxx1, Axx1). The marked containers display an optically readable marking (3, 4), from which the information for the automatic sorting out of an issue can be noted.
