digitizer

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digitizer
1. A device that produces a digital representation of an object. Digitizers use various technologies – optics, acoustics, magnetostriction, electromagnetics, resistance, capacitance, etc. – to calculate the position of the stylus or puck that is used to input the data values. A digitizer can be two- or three-dimensional. A common application is to capture information related to schematic line drawings.

2. Another name for quantizer, but generally implying that the output is encoded into binary numbers.