Document hopper with eccentric floor cylinders and a front auger

Claim 1

A feeder hopper for feeding documents into the feeder nudger belts of a document sorter, comprising: a base including an open-topped box having a bottom and walls for receiving stacks of documents; a plurality of openings forming slots through the bottom of said box; a plurality of rollers extending through the slots in the bottom of the box to serve as low friction supports for the edges of documents placed in the box; means causing said rollers to rotate and contact edges of documents placed on edge in the box, thereby driving the documents in a first direction to force first ends of the documents against one wall of the box; an opening forming a slot through said one wall of said box; an additional roller extending through the slot in the one wall of the box in a position enabling it to engage said first ends of the documents; means causing said additional roller to rotate in a manner to enable it to contact the first ends of the documents; each of the plurality of rollers having an eccentric axis about which it rotates; each eccentric axis enabling a roller, as it rotates, alternately to lift up and drop documents in contact with said roller, thereby lessening the effects of friction on and between the documents to prepare them for ready movement in a second direction substantially orthogonal to the first; said additional roller having an eccentric axis about which it rotates; said eccentric axis enabling the additional roller, as it rotates, to push against the ends of documents causing them to move between positions determined by motion of the plurality of rollers and positions determined by the eccentricity of the additional roller; and flag means aligned to engage the stack of documents and biased to force the documents in the second direction, thereby driving the documents in the second direction.