#1451: ThresholdRefresh

I often have to insert a season ticket into a railway station ticket barrier.

These tickets are made of paper and have a lifetime which is much less than that of the season in question. This usually necessitates several trips to get replacements from the not-always friendly, and much queued-for, ticket office. It also causes roadblocks at rush-hour when the people behind me suddenly have to stop and reverse to let me reverse.

Today’s invention is a ticket barrier which reads the incoming ticket as normal and assesses the readability of the information.

If it is lower than a threshold value, suggesting that it’s about to become useless by virtue of normal wear (but hasn’t been tampered with), the barrier itself will immediately print a new ticket and output that as I pass through (retaining the original for later destruction and or analysis).