Machine-readable medium

Machine-readable medium

In telecommunication, a machine-readable medium (automated data medium) is a medium capable of storing data in a machine-readable format that can be accessed by an automated sensing device and capable of being turned into (practically in every case) some form of binary.

Examples of machine-readable media include (a) magnetic disks, cards, tapes, and drums, (b) punched cards and paper tapes, (c) optical disks, (d) barcodes and (e) magnetic ink characters.

ISBN represented as EAN-13 bar code showing both machine-readable and human-readable data

Common machine-readable data storage and data transmission technologies include processing waveforms, optical character recognition (OCR) and barcodes. Any information retrievable by any form of energy can be machine-readable. Examples include:

See also

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from the General Services Administration document "Federal Standard 1037C".