Method and apparatus for discriminating and counting documents

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail.
It should be understood, however, that it is not intended to limit the invention to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a currency discrimination system adapted to U.
S.
currency is described in connection with, for example, FIGS.
1-38.
Subsequently, modifications to such a discrimination system will be described in obtaining a currency discrimination system in accordance with other preferred embodiments of the present invention, such a currency discriminator systems having multiple scanheads per side.
Furthermore, while the preferred embodiments below entail the scanning of currency bills, the system of the present invention is applicable to other documents as well.
For example, the system of the present invention may be employed in conjunction with stock certificates, bonds, and postage and food stamps.
Referring now to FIGS.
1 and 2a, there is shown a preferred embodiment of a currency scanning and counting machine 10 according to the present invention.
The machine 10 includes an input receptacle or bill accepting station 12 where stacks of currency bills that need to be identified and counted are positioned.
Bills in the input receptacle are acted upon by a bill separating station 14 which functions to pick out or separate one bill at a time for being sequentially relayed by a bill transport mechanism 16 (FIG.
2a), according to a precisely predetermined transport path, between a pair of scanheads 18a, 18b where the currency denomination of the bill is scanned and identified.
In the preferred embodiment depicted, each scanhead 18a, 18b is an optical scanhead that scans for characteristic information from a scanned bill 17 which is used to identify the denomination of the bill