BANK BILL IDENTIFICATION DEVICE

There has been proposed in prior art an identification device which identifies the denomination of a bank bill from the numerical figures thereon; however, it is of a simple type which recognizes the numerical figures by the variation of the light level reflected from the portion of a note having such numerical figures printed thereon by means of a sensor to thereby identify the denomination thereof. The device is detrimental in that a note is erroneously identified due to stains on the note. It is not quite practically usable as it is necessary to convey a note with one of the edges thereof placed under a strict control so that the numerical portion thereof should be surely passed through the sensoring position. According to this invention, one-dimensional image sensors are provided over the numerical portion on both sides of a note, signals output from the image sensors in time serial are encoded and characteristic signals for the numerical figures on the note are formed. The characteristic signals are stored for each scanning of the image sensors, thus stored data is computed to be compared with the reference data which has been stored corresponding to the denomination of notes, thereby identifying the denomination of the note.