Examination paper scoring assembly

Claim 1

For use in photo-transmissive electronic machine scoring of multiple-choice type examination papers, the combination comprising a light transmissive type test answer response sheet and an aperture device having: a. a test answer response sheet having thereon in regular row and column array a plurality of rows of multiple-choice answer Response blocks and at least one column of said multiple-choice answer response blocks, each said answer response block comprising of an opaque rectangle containing therein a plurality of spaced and aligned rectangular light transmissive areas which can be rendered opaque by a mark applied by a student; and b. an aperture device to be used with the test answer response sheet during scoring comprised of an opaque surface with a pattern of rectangular light transmissive areas that are adapted to register and cooperate with correspondingly located said light transmissive areas of said test answer response sheet; with each rectangular light transmissive area of said test answer response sheet and each rectangular light transmissive area of said aperture device being defined at their design center positions when used together in the scoring machine such that each rectangular light transmissive area of the said test answer response sheet having a width greater than the width of the correspondingly located rectangular light transmissive area of the said aperture device in one coordinate dimension by an amount of overlap on each side that is substantially equal to or greater than the expected maximum overall misalignment from the said design center position during actual use and a width less than the width of the correspondingly located rectangular light transmissive area of the said aperture device in the orthogonal coordinate dimension by an amount of overlap on each side that is substantially equal to or greater than the expected maximum overall misalignment from the said design center position during actual use to provide relatively large and constant area resultant apertures that are substantially without size or positional alignment errors due to manufacturing tolerance accumulation and assembly misalignment and permits closer adjacent aperture spacing by minimizing light energy interference to each photo-detector from adjacent aperture positions.