Abstract: A laser-excited marking system wherein a laser beam is used to mark information on an article. A laser beam from a laser is directed onto a scanner unit which includes positionable mirrors for reflecting the laser beam onto the article. The positionable mirrors are positioned in accordance with control signals from a controller to reflect the laser beam in two dimensions. Information consisting of alphanumeric and symbolic characters is provided as an input to the controller. The controller includes a general purpose computer which is programmed to develop control signals for the scanner unit whereby the character information input to the controller is marked by the reflected laser beam on the article. Stored within the computer is a listing containing a two-dimensional dot matrix representation of each alphanumeric and symbolic character, each such dot matrix being referred to as a character matrix.