Scanner

A scanner is a device that images a printed page or graphic by digitizing it, producing an image made of tiny pixels of different brightness and color values which are represented numerically and sent to the computer. Scanners scan graphics, but they can also scan pages of text which are then run through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software that identifies the individual letter shapes and creates a text file of the page's contents.

Types of Scanners:

Sheet-Fed Scanner : Sheet-fed scanners have mechanical rollers that move the paper past the scan head. 



Flatbed Scanner : Flatbed Scanners have a glass window where the item to be scanned is placed on top of a while the head moves past the item. This method is similar to a Xerox machine.







Hand Held Scanners : Hand held scanners are small, portable scanners that depend on a human operator to move the head across the object or image to be scanned.