23 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT SCANNERS YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW

We’ve compiled a list of intriguing facts about scanning that you probably didn’t know. From 3D scanners to portable document scanner, keep reading to discover the most fascinating facts about scanners.

1. The first picture scanner designed for use with a computer was a drum scanner. A team led by Russell A. Kirsch built it in 1957 at the US National Bureau of Standards. This machine’s initial image was a 5 cm square snapshot of Kirsch’s three-month-old son, Walden.
2. In order to use a drum scanner, the item to be scanned was wrapped around a drum while a single cathode ray light sensor assessed the brightness in a single place. It then created a chain of observations as the drum rotated the picture. However, there was no storage space for these scans, which were made to facilitate digital picture transfer.
3. In 1964, R.T. Moore, M.C. Stark, and L. Cahn of the National Bureau of Standards created a precision scanner that could accommodate a much larger image. It was based on a commercial lathe body with a dimensional precision of 1/200 inch, which could capture 2.98 million pixels of information at one of eight levels of gray. These devices were large and needed the use of specialized magnetic tape machines to retain the scanned data.
4. Researchers at Bell Labs, George Smith and Willard Boyle, worked on a way to record pictures based on silicon’s reactivity to light and the capacity to transmit the resulting electrical charge over the surface of a semiconductor in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They built a gadget with a network of linked light-sensitive sensors known as charge-coupled devices, or CCDs. These were incorporated into scanner technology in the 1970s.
5. In 1974, Ray Kurzweil invented both optical character recognition technology and the concept of a flatbed scanner in which the sensor moves across the paper rather than the paper going around a drum.
6. Kurzweil also built the first device capable of scanning a printed page in several type styles and turning it into understandable full-word speech in 1975. The scanner was part of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, a bigger device that transformed print to audio and was intended as a reading prosthetic device for the blind and visually challenged.
7. This scanner, built by Kurzweil for the visually impaired and blind, only functioned on a horizontal strip about an inch high and had just 64 kilobytes of memory. Engineers eventually enhanced scanner resolution and memory capacity, allowing these machines to record pictures at up to 9600 dpi.
8. Falling computer component prices resulted in the creation of less expensive and more powerful scanners, such as those produced by Microtek in 1985 and Xerox and Kodak in 1991.
9. In 1992, the TWAIN standard for integrating scanner software with computer hardware was established. It offered a common set of function calls that allowed a computer to control the functionality of any scanner brand.
10. Flatbed scanners were affordable and dependable by the 2000s, with entry-level equipment costing as low as $60.
11. Scanning a negative is better than scanning the real image. This is because negatives have higher color quality and allow you to work from the original rather than a print.
12. QR codes were initially introduced to the public in 1996 and are not required to be black and white. They may appear as they like as long as there is a darker and lighter hue for contrast.
13. The first time a barcode was scanned, it was to label train waggons. 
14. Barcode scanners can read 1D and 2D barcodes. They can also take monochrome photographs.
15. François Willème, a French artist and sculptor, invented 3D scanning in 1830. The technique was dubbed photo sculpture. However, it was subsequently forgotten about until the 1960s because the technology was expensive.  Grammar & plaig. checked
16. Willème would create a 3D scan by placing a human on a circular platform encircled by 24 cameras, one per 15 degrees. He’d photograph the person while simultaneously projecting and tracing the pictures in clay or wood with a pantograph. This resulted in a three-dimensional figure. The finished product was then utilized as a mould for casting, allowing almost anybody to manufacture busts and portrait bas-reliefs. Recently, certain art students recreated this process.
17. The 3D scanner was used to reveal the ancient city of Angkor Wat. Archeologists from the University of Illinois utilized a laser scanner to examine 734 km of the city complex in 2015. The laser was able to cut through the jungle and show a previously unknown topology: a secret network of cities, highways, and water systems.
18. Modern 3D scanners are virtually capable of scanning items of all sizes. These machines can detect anything from jewels to whole buildings.
19. 3D scanners aid in the investigation of crimes. For decades, forensic investigators have used cameras to photograph crime scenes. 3D scans can deliver more useful data than traditional 2D photos. They allow professionals to collect data more quickly and thoroughly. This is due to the fact that they capture the shape and color of an item. One person is sufficient to use a 3D scanner to map crime scenes effectively. This minimizes the number of people at a busy location, such as a roadway. Because of how detailed 3D crime scene scans are, criminologists can return to them at any moment to analyze data without having to travel to the actual location.
20. Portable scanners are classified into two types: manual-feed and sheet-fed scanners. Manual-feed portables can only handle one page at a time, whether it is one-sided or two-sided, whereas sheetfed scanners are designed with ADFs for scanning multipage documents.
21. The fastest scanner for books can scan documents in as little as 1 second per page.
22. To retain both the contents of the document and establish a digital picture record of the document’s present condition, software-driven devices and robots have been designed to scan books without the need to unbind them. This new trend is owing, in part, to ever-improving imaging technology that enables a high-quality digital archival image to be acquired in a reasonable amount of time with little or no harm to a rare or fragile book.
23. The Digitizing Line scanner, developed by 4DigitalBooks in Switzerland, was the first completely automated book scanner. The first known installation occurred in 2001 at Stanford University. In the same year, the scanner was named a Dow Jones Runner-Up in the Business Applications Category.

CONCLUSION

Scanners are quite interesting pieces of technology. They have come such a long way from when they were manually operated to where they can capture images and documents so accurately by the press of a button, save and encrypt them. This concludes our list.

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