The PhyzBatch-9000, TCG Machines’ trading card sorting machine, embodies the latest in a flurry of automatic card sorters and scanners to enter the market over the past four years ^{1 2 3}. As a completely impartial observer 🤨, I would add that the PhyzBatch-9000 also represents the most practical and useful of these novel machines. So, what exactly makes the PhyzBatch-9000 stand out from other trading card scanners and sorters on the market? The answer is plain and simple: speed.

Other commercially available card sorting machines all use a gantry-style design with three basic elements: (1) sorting bins arranged in a horizontal grid; (2) a three-axis gantry carriage, which you may be familiar with from a 3D printer or a “claw machine”; and (3) a suction cup head. While a gantry will certainly work as the basis for a card sorter, it suffers a significant drawback: it is speed-limited by the path it must travel to pick and place each card. Allow me to illustrate a typical gantry machine sorting operation for a single card:

1. The gantry positions itself over a bin containing a card
2. The suction head lowers and picks up the card
3. The suction head raises the card up above the grid of bins
4. The suction head bends or shakes the card to remove any other cards clinging to it
5. The gantry – are you bored yet? – positions itself over an output bin
6. The suction head lowers the card to its destination and releases the card
7. The suction head returns to the gantry

Holy moly – there must be a better way! Enter the PhyzBatch-9000, a linear conveyor sorter which only needs to transport cards in one direction (forward). Here is a typical sorting operation for the PhyzBatch-9000:

1. A card is conveyed through the machine in one direction
2. The card is deposited in its output bin

Well now, that was more reasonable. You may be feeling some apprehension around the notion of placing your cards into a conveyor-style sorting machine. “I like the suction cup!” you say, “It reminds me of the gentle caress of a giant squid. Clearly this is how God intended my cards to be handled.” It may interest you to know that the concept for a card sorting machine has been around for more than 137 years⁴, and a conveyor-style card sorter was among the very first inventions to be automated. This certainly surprised me when I began looking into patenting the design of our machine and discovered the basic mechanics of our system had already been invented over a century ago⁵. So, if you are looking for precedence for people trusting a conveyor-style sorting machine to handle their incredibly valuable cards, then buckle-up for a brief history lesson!

In 1880, the United States was experiencing a massive growth in its population, and the Census Office was not able to keep up with the influx. The process of manually cataloging and sorting through the census data "… was maddeningly slow and expensive"⁶ – hmmm, that sure sounds familiar. In 1884, Herman Hollerith, an engineer working at the Census Office, applied for a patent of his “art of compiling statistics”, a seminal document which laid the groundwork for modern computer processing. Three years later, Hollerith applied for a second patent, this one for his "machine for tabulating statistics"⁷. Hollerith’s machine was used to sort and process punched cards containing the data collected in the 1890 United States census. Hollerith and his machine became a central pillar in the formation of IBM, which produced a series of automated Card Sorters throughout the 20th century⁸. IBM stopped marketing their final punched card sorting machine, the IBM 85, in 1978⁹, after “… more than a half-century of transforming business in virtually every industry in the world.”⁶.

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References

1. Roca Robotics, "Roca - Robotic Card Sorter," [Online]. Available: https://www.rocarobotics.com/. [Accessed 5 April 2021].
2. Fabbrica Binaria, "Magic Sorter," [Online]. Available: https://www.magic-sorter.com/. [Accessed 5 April 2021].
3. CardCastle, "CardBot - Automated card scanning and sorting," [Online]. Available: https://cardcastle.co/cardbot. [Accessed 5 April 2021].
4. H. Hollerith, "Art of Compiling Statistics". United States of America Patent 395,782, 8 January 1889.
5. H. Holerith, "Sorting Machine". United States of America Patent 1,237,646, 21 August 1917.
6. IBM, "The Punched Card Tabulator," [Online]. Available: ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/tabulator/.[Accessed 6 April 2021].
7. H. Hollerith, "Machine for Tabulating Statistics". United States of America Patent 526,130, 18 September 1894.
8. F. d. Cruz, "IBM Card Sorters," January 2001. [Online]. Available: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/sorters.html. [Accessed 5 April 2021].
9. IBM, "IBM 85 collator," [Online]. Available: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV4014.html. [Accessed 5 April 2021].