Which term means machines that scan and read a document?

• A. Digital Copier
• B. OCR Engine
• C. Document Camera
• D. Optical Scanner

Answer: (D)

Optical scanners are devices that capture the image of a physical page and convert it into a digital file. They’re categorized by hardware that performs the scanning action, turning a paper document into a digital image you can store or process. While OCR software can read the characters from that scanned image and turn them into editable text, the term that names the device doing the scanning itself is optical scanner. A digital copier is about making copies, which may involve scanning but isn’t the specific hardware name; a document camera displays pages to a screen rather than preserving a digital file of the page; and OCR engines are software that read the text from a scan rather than the hardware that performs the scan.