Quick acting bank note recovery system

Claim 1

In a cash dispensing machine, comprising a means for taking out bank notes one by one from a bank note store, a means for accumulating a mass of counted bank notes, a means for forwarding said accumulated mass of counted bank notes to a customer, and a means for forwarding said one by one taken out bank notes to said bank note accumulating means, a bank note recovery system comprising: (a) a means for checking said putatively single taken out bank notes as they are being forwarded by said forwarding means, for determining whether each of said putatively single bank notes in reality is a single bank note or is an overlapped bank note packet, for also determining an approximate distance between consecutive ones of said putatively single bank notes, and for outputting signals representative of these determinations; (b) a means for recovering bank notes; (c) a means for selectively directing said putatively single bank notes which are being forwarded by said forwarding means, either to be added to said accumulated mass of counted bank notes, or to said bank note recovery means; (d) a means for selectively transferring said entire accumulated mass of counted bank notes to said bank note recovering means; and (e) a means, which receives said output signals of said checking means, for controlling said elements so as: (w) when said checking means determines that one of said putatively single bank notes being forwarded by said forwarding means in reality is a single bank note, to control said selective directing means so as to direct said single bank note to be added to said accumulated mass of counted bank notes; (x) when said checking means determines that one of said putatively single bank notes being forwarded by said forwarding means in reality is an overlapped bank note packet, then: (y) if said checking means determines that the approximate distance between this overlapped bank note packet and the previous putatively single bank note is greater than a certain predetermined distance, to control said selective directing means so as to direct said overlapped bank note packet along a predetermined path to said bank note recovering means; but (z) if said checking means determines that the approximate distance between this overlapped bank note packet and the previous putatively single bank note is less than said certain predetermined distance, to control said selective directing means so as to direct said overlapped bank note packet to be added to said accumulated mass of counted bank notes in said accumulating means, and subsequently to control said selective transferring means to transfer said entire accumulated mass of counted bank notes along said predetermined path to said bank note recovering means.