Evolution of Scanners - Everything you need to know

In the world of computers, the scanner is a device that optically scans images, printed or written text, a three-dimensional object, etc. representing it in a digital format.

If you scan a document, you can keep a copy on your laptop or computer and have it with you at all times. Scanners also help cut down on the amount of paper that is used. You can take a picture of the document and make many copies of it to pass it around.

The scanners help to speed up the process and work of the office. In addition, it enables you to keep your documents safe by converting them into a digital form so that you can save them on your computer or send them to someone else by email or text message.

While the first scanners could only read 8 bits (28), then 10 bits (210), then 12 bits (212), they can now read up to 16 bits (216), or 65,000 greyscales. However, the human eye can’t see all of them. But, with time, scanners have grown in cost too.

History of Scanners

The history of Computer scanners began when Rudolf Hell came up with the idea for the fax machine about 50 years ago. The scanner was then invented in Kiel, starting with the fax machine. The first image it scanned was of Walden, the son of the inventor of the computer scanner.

The first scanner developed for use with a computer was a drum scanner. It was built in 1957 at the US National Bureau of Standards by a team led by Russell A. Kirsch, working on America’s first internally programmable (stored-program) computer, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC), to enable Kirsch’s group to experiment with algorithms that launched the fields of image processing and image pattern recognition.

Types of Scanners

As technology advances scanners also evolved along with the latest technology initially, drum scanners came into being, and later on Flatbed Scanner, Film Scanner, and 3D Scanner were invented.

The now ubiquitous device can be found in offices as a desktop (or flatbed) scanner, where the document is placed on a glass window for scanning; in engineering and creative labs as a 3D scanner, used for industrial design, reverse engineering, test and measurement, gaming and other applications; in printing shops as very-high-quality drum scanners, that are superior in resolution, color gradation, and value structure.

Evolution of Scanners

But as soon as Smartphones and iPhones came into being and hardware like cameras, telephones, calendars, calculators converted into software known as mobile applications to become part of these magical & smart handheld devices. Scanners also adopted this new technology and lots of software engineers around the world make mobile applications for Scanners.

So as a result now there are lots of applications are available at Play Store and Apple Store to scan images and documents using your smartphones and thus you don’t need to take hardware scanners with you for scanning purposes anymore.

But now a new challenge arises as users have to choose the best application among the huge collection of scanners mobile apps available in the market. Because most of the apps have bugs and users are not satisfied with the performance. So we took this responsibility to choose the best mobile application for our readers. So after a lot of research and testing, we choose an android application “PDF Scanner App- Scan Document” for our readers.

PDF Scanner App- Scan Document

PDF doc scanner is a fast document scanner and PDF creator for the quick scan of documents. This app clearly identifies the content of documents to scan them. You can scan ID cards, book photos, and other PDF documents too with it.

We found the following features of this application while we were reviewing and testing this application:

Scanning of documents clearly recognizes the text characters of documents and organizes them with sharpness and clarity through the fast scan. This app scan text from any photo with clarity. This Smart scanner app automatically recognizes the area, which needs to be cropped before and after scanning. Users can rotate, reorder, and adjust colors using filters on the scanned files.

You can also scan ID Cards, ID Photographs, Passports, Books, and other professional documents with the help of this application. Most of the apps available in the market place their watermarks on the scanned documents but this application also does not place any kind of watermark on the scanned documents.

You can get this amazing android application on your smartphone for free. Click here to get this application.