Document shunt mechanism for a document transport system

Claim 1

In a document handling system including a document transport for moving a document through the document handling system and including at least one document shunting station whereby a given document may be selectively shunted into a given document hopper, the improvement for electronically controlling the shunting of a document into a predetermined hopper, said improvement comprising: a document sensor means for detecting a document entering the document transport and generating a signal indicative thereof, a first counter circuit means, said first counter circuit means being incremented by the output signal of said document sensor means and assigning an address identification to the document entering the document transport, a storage means comprising a plurality of storage locations each capable of storing a document shunt command signal, said address identification associated with said document corresponding to one of said storage locations, shunt command input means for entering document shunt information into a predetermined storage location of said storage means, a time delay circuit means responding to the output signal of said document sensor means by generating a time delay signal after a predetermined time delay corresponding to the anticipated time of travel of the document from the location of the transport corresponding to said document sensor to a location approximating the document shunt station, a second counter circuit means responding to said time delay signal by addressing the storage location of said storage means corresponding to the address identification of said document and retrieving the information stored at said address location in said storage means, and a shunt station actuator means operably connected to said transport and said second counter circuit means to control the operation of said shunt station in response to the information retrieved from said storage means.