Software for OCR'ing paper tape?

26 May 2012

...

   I had to design a conductivity sensor controller
for work a few months
 ago.  Its unit of measure is microsiemens.
  We're STILL getting good mileage out of that around the office. =)  
     Just for the lulz, yesterday I saw a current amplifier that works in the 
 order of FEMTOamps (!!!) and uses - gasp - 10 GIGAohms resistors :oO Things 
 I never saw in my life (used in gas chromatographs) 
I remember _years_ ago (about 40 years ago), you could get things called 
'Megistors' (and I think they were old technology then). I certainly 
remember 10^10 and 10^11 ohm ones (10 GOhms and 100GOhms), they might 
have been a 10^12 (1TOhm) one as well.

As I am sure you arre aware workning on such stuff is not trivial. 
Leakage paths from oils from your fingers have a much lower resistace. 
You need to keep things very clean.

I rememebr when I was working at Bristol we found out the hard way that 
the pigment used in blakc plastic boxes had a notceably lower resistance 
than the one used for whait plastic boxes. ( think were were just 
measuring nanoamps, but at quite high votlages (10kV or so). So gigohms 
matters...

-tony

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Software for OCR'ing paper tape?