Abstract: In a character recognition system lines of data are stored in a line memory via a series of multiplexers. The data can originate in a controller for the system, a character reading station or other sub-systems, and is supplied to the line memory over a controller bus, a transport bus and a line memory bus, respectively. Although stored in line form, two-dimensional sub-arrays of the data in various configurations can be accessed directly by the other sub-systems of the recognition system via the multiplexers and the line memory bus, without the interaction of the controller bus.