Abstract: An optical character recognition device including means to define a scanning area which includes portions of a printed character to be scanned by a television camera, said camera scanning discrete points of said area arranged in spaced vertical paths, and including means to measure the optical density of the character portion encountered at each point and to assign a binary-coded numerical value to each point and to store each of said numerical values in a matrix-like fashion corresponding to the respective point's position in said scanning area.