Abstract: An automatic telephone dialer system using optical input of telephone numbers from printed materials. Numbers can be stored as bar codes (22) readable by a bar code wand (26) or as characters (24) readable by an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanner (106). When the number is read by the autodialer unit it is interpreted by a microcontroller (50) which commands a DTMF (Dual Tone MultiFrequency) generator (56) to send dialing signals to a telephone line (72). Dialing occurs when a sensor (68) detects that an attached telephone handset (74) is off-hook. Multiple numbers can be read into memory (42) and the next sequential number will be dialed after the telephone handset goes on-hook then off-hook. The sequence of numbers can be cleared by a reset switch (30). Bar codes are self checking and require only one scan. The autodialer unit can be configured to delete all scanned area codes or access codes.