A compact currency evaluation device for identifying the denomination of U.S. currency bills of different denominations comprising:</claim-text> a housing having a depth dimension, a width dimension and a height dimension within which said device is sed; said height dimension being about 4 times the smaller cross-sectional dimension of the smallest dimensioned bill to be identified by said device; a denomination discriminating unit adapted to denominate bills of a plurality of U.S. denominations, and to retrieve characteristic information from one or more bills; a memory for storing master characteristic information associated with each genuine bill which the system is capable of identifying; and said discriminating unit including signal processing means for comparing said retrieved characteristic information with master characteristic information associated with at least one genuine bill; said signal processing means generating an indication of the denomination of said bill based on said comparison which said retrieved characteristic information sufficiently matches said master characteristic information. view more

A compact currency evaluation device for identifying the denomination of currency bills of different denominations comprising:</claim-text> a housing having a depth dimension, a width dimension and a height dimension within which said device is sed; said depth dimension being about 5 times the smaller cross-sectional dimension of the smallest dimensioned bill to be identified by said device; said width dimension being about 2 times the larger cross-sectional dimension of the smallest dimensioned bill to be identified by said device; a denomination discriminating unit for retrieving characteristic pattern information from one or more bills; a memory for storing master characteristic pattern information associated with each genuine bill which the system is capable of denominating; and said discriminating unit including signal processing means for comparing said retrieved characteristic pattern information with master characteristic pattern information associated with at least one genuine bill; said signal processing means generating an indication of the denomination of said bill based on said comparison when said retrieved characteristic pattern information sufficiently matches said master characteristic pattern information. view more

The method of claim 49 further comprising displaying a total value of bills contained in the output receptacle and the number of bills of each of the plurality of denominations contained in the output receptacle.

The method of claim 84 wherein the transporting and denominating are performed at a rate in excess of about 800 bills per minute.

The method of claim 112 wherein the transporting and the denominating are performed at a rate in excess of about 1000 bills per minute.

A currency authenticator having a plurality of sensitivity settings comprising: one or more detectors for retrieving a plurality of types of characteristic information from a bill to be authenticated and generating a respective output signal associated with each type of characteristic information; means for selecting, for each type of characteristic information, one of a plurality of sensitivity settings; means for storing, for each type of characteristic information, reference information associated with each of said sensitivity settings; means for comparing, for each type of characteristic information, said respective output signal to corresponding reference information associated with the one of said plurality of sensitivity settings selected by said means for selecting for said type of characteristic information; and means for indicating that said bill is counterfeit if one or more of said output signals do not satisfactorily compare with said reference information. view more

The method of claim 35 further including counting the bills under control of the evaluation device, the counting device comprising one or more counters keeping track of the value of bills discriminated.