what is MICR in cheaques?

Answer 1

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, or MICR, a character recognition technology adopted mainly by the banking industry to facilitate the processing of checks. The process was demonstrated to the American Bankers Association in July 1956, and it was almost universally employed in the U.S. by 1963.

In addition to their unique fonts, MICR characters are printed ith a magnetic ink or toner, usually containing iron oxide. Magnetic printing is used so that the characters can be reliably read into a system, even when they have been overprinted with other marks such as cancellation stamps. The characters are read with a device similar in nature to the head of an audio tape recorder, and the letterforms' bulbous shapes ensure that each letter produces a unique waveform for the read head.

The error rate for the magnetic scanning of the numbers at the bottom of a typical check is smaller than with optical character recognition systems.

In 1963, the MICR fonts became a symbol of modernity, leading to the creation of lookalike "computer" typefaces that imitated the appearance of the MICR fonts, but, unlike real MICR fonts, had a full character repertoire.

Answer 2

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.

It is a system for reading the numbers at the bottom of a cheque. It was developed a long time ago, before computers were as powerful as they are today.

A special ink is used, which contains a magnetic substance such as ferric oxide.

The original readers could not detect the shape of characters reliably; so the digits were printed using thick and thin lines chosen so that each digit requires a different *amount* of ink. The amount of magnetic material -- and hence the amount of ink, and so the digit -- can be measured quite accurately, using a simple electronic circuit. As the cheque moves through the reader, first an electromagnet magnetises the ink, then a pickup coil detects how much magnetism was applied.