From: "Frank E. Terhaar-Yonkers" <fty@mcnc.org>
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 08:34:34 +0800
To: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Re: Drive the SF Central Freeway, have your license plate photo'ed.
Message-ID: <199608092229.SAA12419@robin.mcnc.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


It's been doable and afforadable for years.  7 years ago when I lived in
Knoxville TN there was(still is?) a firm there called Perceptics.  One of 
their products was an imaging system to OCR license plates.  I understood
the system was/is in use or being tested at US border crossings.

 >Date: Fri, 09 Aug 1996 11:56:34 -0700 Bill Stewart wrote:
 >At 10:45 PM 8/8/96 -0700, Lucky wrote:
 >>At 21:55 8/8/96, i am not a number! wrote:
 >>>CBS radio news this morning: 80,000 commuters traveling the central
 >>>f'way in SF will have information mailed to them regarding the quake retrofit
 >>>How?  Their license plates have been photographed.
 >
 >>You *are* making this up, right? Please say you did.
 >
 >It's possible today, and probably affordable.  If not, it will be in 1-2 years,
 >as Moore's law cranks down processing costs and video technology improves.
 >For this application, they don't have to photograph every car, or read every
 >plate successfully, or do it in real time.  The objective is to get lots of
 >drivers to take other routes or mass transit so they don't have to dump all
 >the traffic onto surface streets right around the construction.
 >
 >Besides, this is nice friendly San Francisco.  Imagine New York City doing it:
 >        Yo!  Mr. E. Koch, 1234 E. 89th St. -
 >        We saw you takin' the West Side Highway last week.
 >        You better stop that as of next Friday. 
 >        We know where you live.  
 >        You got a problem wit' that?
 >                        Rudy.
 >
 >#			Thanks;  Bill
 ># Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
 ># <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	Defuse Authority!
 >

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Frank Terhaar-Yonkers,  Manager
High Performance Computing and Communications Research
MCNC
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