Input and Output Devices-4

Still today we have discussed for different types of the computer hardware devices. Form last few days we are talking on input and output devices which is most important part of the computer hardware. The input or output units of a computer system establish the communication between the system and its users. A large number of input and output units are available in the market. A few of them are discussed in this note.

Most recent trend for data input is towards source data automation. The equipments used for source data automation capture data as a by-product of a business activity thereby completely eliminating manual input of data. Some examples are:

1. Magnetic ink character recognition devices are used by the banking industry to read the account numbers on cheques directly and do the necessary processing.
2. Optical mark recognition devices can sense marks on computer readable papers.

This king of device is used by academic and testing institutions to grade aptitude tests where candidates mark the correct alternatives on a special sheet of paper. These answer sheets are then directly read by the optical mark recognition devices and the information sent to a computer for processing.