DEC PDP-8/E in Three Days of the Condor (1975)
The 8 appears at the beginning of the film in Jospeh's office where it appears to be scanning and processing text documents.
Text processing is reasonable enough, but the scanner (and presumably OCR) are a little far fetched.
Jos
Not far fetched, I have a PDP8/E that was used for scanning and OCR. ( ECRM, company still exists) Still have all the software, special oomnibus boards, but nor the scanner itself
2009-04-23 16:36
Sherman
I have aScanner head, lots of DEC PDP-8s, no books!!!
2015-09-04 10:56
RICM
ECRM made PDP-8/e and PDP-8/m based scanners that supported OCR and would interpret proofreaders annotations. There is one at the RICM: https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipment/dec-pdp-8m-ecrm-scanner
2022-01-07 01:34
DH
Indeed it did OCR as mentioned by other readers. It used an Helium-Neon laser tube and rotating mirror to scan lines (not unlike a laser printer) and to detect presence of ink on the paper by measuring the amount of light reflected. Was useful to speed up the process of issuing daily newspapers with the early phototypesetters.
2024-04-17 23:26