Abstract: The invention relates to a method of sorting cutlery, comprising opto-electronic dynamic recognition and identification of the cutlery. The pieces of cutlery are brought forward in a longitudinal direction one by one behind each other on a moving conveyor belt (12). The movement of the belt is precision linked to a pulsator (13), which emits pulses with a frequency that is directly proportional to the speed of the belt. The pieces of cutlery are brought by the conveyor belt to pass one by one through an optical read-off unit (14) between a light source (32) and a bar (40) of photo-transistors (33) or light-conductors (38) which transmit light to photo-transistors. The bar extends at right angles to the direction of movement of the belt, so that it is partially shaded by the cutlery when this passes, whereupon the photo-transistors in the parts of the bar shaded at any moment are inactivated.