Optophone

The concept of measuring how much ink appears as the text passes a vertical slot came back again in the 1950s. MICR codes, the numbers that appear on checks, are read that way. [1] Or at least were in the original implementation. The ink was magnetized and the paper went past a one-track magnetic tape head. The waveform for each symbol is unique. The recognizer is more like a bar code reader than an OCR system.

There are only 14 characters in that font - the digits 0-9 and four special field identification symbols. The 1970s "futuristic" text fonts which look like MICR symbols are purely decorative.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni...

Later models of the Optophone allowed speeds of up to 60 words per minute, though only some subjects are able to achieve this rate

Looking at the speeds with which people can communicate with Morse, I suspect that the skill of effectively turning your brain into a UART is something that improves with much practice.

After reading Hail Mary, I wondered how reasonable it was for someone to truly be able to understand a language based in tones / chords alone. Maybe 60 words per minute would be enough to communicate but it sure would be frustrating.

Is this a lighthearted jab at computer vision being reduced to tokens?

I take it this was before speak and spell