Abstract :
The wide-spread use of single-strike carbon typewriter ribbons, from which typed text can be read directly, provides investigators with a potential source of evidence and information. However, reading and transcribing these ribbons manually is both difficult and extremely labour intensive. Industrial Monitoring Equipment Limited has developed a ribbon transcription vision system in order to overcome this problem. The RAW-1 ribbon analysis workstation is a computer driven system designed to enable specialists in questioned documents to transcribe and analyse any of the wide range of single-strike, film typewriter ribbons in a vastly reduced period of time compared with that currently taken. During this operation operator involvement and handling are both reduced to a minimum and the resultant print-out displays everything on the original ribbon, including typing errors and blemishes