Xerox develops a new micro font

Xerox scientists have developed the microtext font so that digitally printing tiny words and numbers will help make documents more secure.

The new MicroText Specialty Imaging Font, just 1/100th of an inch high, is designed to help make valuable documents with personal information such as birth certificates, personal identification papers, and cheques even harder to forge.

Microscopic words are already hidden in the design of credit cards, cheques and currency as a deterrent to counterfeiting.

Now Xerox's innovation carries microprinting to the next level because it can make important documents more secure by individualising the tiny letters and numbers.

Today, the signature line on some personal cheques is actually the super-small words 'authorised signature' written over and over on the offset-printed blank cheque stock.

But when a digital printer is used, any element on the page - lines, text, images - can be unique to the recipient.

Combine that with the new Xerox MicroText font, and your name and address could be repeated to form the signature line.

Or companies and government agencies that issue cheques - pay cheques, rebate cheques, Social Security cheques, etc - could print the amount of the cheque in mouse-size type as well as in a normal-size font.

"Microprinting variable information makes individualised documents - whether they are birth certificates or drivers licenses or pay cheques or transcripts - even more time-consuming to replicate," said Reiner Eschbach, a research fellow in the Xerox Innovation Group.

"Adding that extra layer of security is a barrier to counterfeiters and makes the document more secure." The new Xerox font takes advantage of improvements in digital printing technology and the ever better image quality delivered by the current generation of Xerox digital printers.

The microscopic printing is so fine that when a 100-page book is converted to the MicroText font, it can be printed on a standard A4 sheet of paper.

Microprinting is one of several specialty imaging technologies Xerox scientists have developed making it easier for a suspicious recipient to tell which cheques, certificates, or other printed materials are authentic.

The new specialty font was unveiled in the new Xerox FreeFlow; Variable Information Suite 5.0, software that Xerox sells to commercial printers that produce personalised documents.

Xerox Innovation At Work Xerox Corporation conducts work in colour science, computing, digital imaging, work practices, electromechanical systems, novel materials, and other disciplines connected to Xerox's expertise in printing and document management.

The company consistently builds its inventions into business by embedding them in Xerox products and solutions, using them as the foundation for new business, or licensing or selling them to other entities.

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