The market for large-format flatbed scanners is shrinking, so products turn over slowly and development is far behind my expectations. That said, the Epson GT-1500 doesn’t look like a bad choice for tight budgets. It has a relatively low maximum resolution of only 600DPI, but has the highest claimed scan speed of 30 seconds at 300DPI. Following that is the Microtek ScanMaker 9800XL, which has a much higher maximum resolution, but much slower scan speed (even at the same resolution as the Epson). The scanner sets itself apart, however, with noise-reduction technology that has made it the darling of some art archivists.

Both of these scanners are around $1,200, but neither of them is really suited to doing much volume.

Looking elsewhere, I found the Konica Minolta PS5000C, a planetary book scanner that returns scans in less than 10 seconds. Price is under $12,000 — not cheap, but low relative to other planetary scanners I’ve seen. Also from Konica MInolta is the MS6000 MK II microform scanner, and a lusty thought crosses my mind: get rid of the old microform printers our libraries have and go all-digital.

scanner, scanners, library, libraries, archive, archives, digital archive, document imaging, large format scanner

Engadget yesterday had a story about the Mobile Plate Hunter 900, a device that mounts on police cars and scans 500 to 800 license plates an hour. More details are in the Wired News story, where LA County police commander Sid Heal notes that the system is hands-off: “It doesn’t require the [officer] to do anything.” The plates are automatically checked against a database of stole cars, and the patrolling officer when the system finds a match.

“We read them coming at us. We read them going by us. We read them parked,” said Mark Windover, president of Remington-Elsag, the developer of the system.

What the article didn’t say is if this is at all related to the license plate reader system by Andrew Bucholz that I reported on in February. At the time, I noted that I was surprised that there wasn’t yet a cameraphone service that would return details about a vehicle and driver based on a picture of the license plate.

Clearly, this is real. Welcome to the world of automated, pervasive surveillance.

tags: LA county, license plate, license plate reader, license plates, mobile, pervasive, police, police car, police cruiser, police state, scanner, surveillance