Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Listen up all you document forgers! Fuji Xerox (apparently the two companies have a joint venture in the Asia-Pacific region) is working on a new system that will make it easy to detect when cheques or other important paper documents have been altered.

The text is printed in a normal fashion with visible CMYK inks but afterwards a fine pattern of dots that form slanted lines is printed over the document. The ink that’s used for these dots is made of copper and phosphorus oxides making them invisible to the naked eye. However since the ink absorbs infra-red light, when the document is scanned with a wide band light source you’re able to see those lines formed by the dot pattern. Subsequently any parts of the text on the document that have been altered or removed should reveal holes or misalignments in the pattern.

So for the 3 weeks or so before the forgers can find a way around this technique I guess they’ll have to rely on ripping off the thousands of companies who don’t immediately adopt this printing technology.

[ Fuji Xerox Patent Application ] VIA [ New Scientist Invention Blog ]