Some Design Considerations for a Document Sorting Machine

A document reader-sorter is analytically studied to determine the effect of document velocity on the number of documents that can be sorted reliably in a given interval of time, and a formula is derived that relates the effect of various design parameters to the throughput of a document sorting machine. One of these parameters, selector response time (i.e., indexing time), is investigated in detail. Both analytical and graphical design techniques are developed to minimize the response time of the selector. These techniques, which are explained by simple examples, are quite general and can therefore be applied to many other incrementing devices.