年月 出来事
1968 Hitachi announced the H-8252 optical character reader, the first general-purpose OCR system produced in Japan
1968/07 Toshiba developed the TR-3 and TR-4, the industry’s first practical mail sorters that could read ordinary handwritten numbers
1969/06 NEC announced the NAS-5B automatic postal code reading and sorting machine
1971/11 Toshiba and the Electro-Technical Laboratory announced the ASPET/71, a document OCR system that read printed English characters
1972/06 Hitachi announced the H-8959 optical character reader, the first general-purpose OCR system produced in Japan that could read handwritten numbers
1973/10 NTT developed counting-register film readers
1974 Hitachi announced the H-8257 and H-8957 optical character readers, the first general-purpose OCR systems produced in Japan that could read handwritten letters and numbers
1975/06 Fujitsu announced the FACOM 6311A form-processing OCR system that featured high-speed reading of handwritten numbers; the company announced the FACOM 6311B in October of that year, which handled standard forms from the Association of Chain Stores and Department Stores
1976 NEC announced the N6470 OCR system that read handwritten katakana characters and small forms at a speed of 300 forms per minute
1976/06 Mitsubishi Electric announced the M2481, a page-format handwritten character OCR reader
1977/08 Hitachi announced the HITAC T-550/30 OCR system for distributed networked systems
1978/08 Fujitsu announced the FACOM 6312B, a handwritten character OCR reader that was the first in the industry to use MPU controllers
1979/04 Mitsubishi Electric announced the M2483, a page-format handwritten character OCR reader with improved performance and fewer limitations on writing implements
1980/02 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT Data) began operating a nationwide social insurance data communication system with the DT-OCR100CN1, a terminal OCR reader for handwritten and printed numbers and symbols
1980/08 Fujitsu announced the FACOM 6315A, a handwritten character OCR reader that functioned as a networked distributed processing terminal
1981/03 Mitsubishi Electric announced the M2483-N, a high-end page-format handwritten character OCR model with enhanced editing functions and improved usability and functionality
1981/07 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT Data) began operating a nationwide Ministry of Labour system with the DT-OCR100CNKX1, an OCR terminal unit for kana characters, numbers, and symbols that read handwritten katakana characters
1984 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT Data) announced the OCR50, a printed kanji character reader, and installed it at publishing firms and other businesses
1984/03 Hitachi announced the HITAC T-550/47 OCR system, the first desktop reader produced in Japan
1984/09 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT Data) announced the OCR50, a printed kanji character reader, and installed it at publishing firms and other businesses
1985 Fujitsu began shipping the FACOM 6321A, an entry-level form, image, and handwritten character OCR that was sufficiently lightweight and compact for office installations
1985/07 Fujitsu announced the FACOM 6678A and B and the FACOM 6679A, which were form, image, and handwritten character OCR readers with expanded Japanese character recognition capabilities
1986/10 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT Data) announced the OCR60, an OCR terminal that recognized handwritten kanji characters (the Ministry of Transport introduced an electronic data processing system for vehicle registrations and inspections in 1988)
1986/12 Toshiba announced the OCR-V3050, a general-purpose form-processing OCR system
1987/12 NEC announced the new N6370 OCR series with superior cost performance that was positioned as a peripheral with a computer or workstation controller
1988/05 Fujitsu announced the FACOM 6365, a document OCR that handled printed documents in the Japanese language in any format
1989/03 Toshiba commercialized the TR-17 address reader and sorter, the world’s first to recognize addresses written with kanji characters
1990 NTT Data announced the OCR40 and the OCR400, letter, number, kana character, and symbol OCR readers with highly accurate recognition of handwritten numbers, and installed the readers in nationwide banking systems
1991/04 Fujitsu announced the FACOM 6335A, a form, image, and handwritten character OCR reader with support for large A3 forms, functions to detect misaligned forms, and three color light sources (added green to the previous red and blue sources) for faster color processing
1991/05 Toshiba announced the ExpressReader 70J, a document OCR reader that supported printed Japanese characters
1993/09 Hitachi announced the Workstation OCR HT-419x series with computer connectivity
1994/07 Hitachi announced the multifunctional OCR 6000 series with connectivity with Windows applications
1995/07 NEC announced a high-speed OCR that read double-sided documents
1997/02 NEC announced the NAS-100, a mail sorter that supported the new seven-digit postal codes and sorted mail by delivery route sequence
1998/02 Toshiba completed the TT-200 mail sorter with a function to sort mail items by delivery route sequence
1998/02 Hitachi announced the Imaging OCR HT-413x series that input images of ordinary documents
1998/08 NEC announced a standing desktop OCR , NS-1000, with a contactless, overhead configuration