Many kinds of transport devices for embossing machines are already known in the art. Some of the oldest ones are similar to paper feeding devices in typewriters. For example, a spring driving means is used for the movement in the direction of the line to be embossed which can be wound by hand or by a motor drive, and the uniform character spacing is attained by means of a toothed rack or a ratchet cooperating with a so-called "control release" which releases one tooth of the toothed rack or the ratchet at a time when a key is operated.
Also the line spacing is performed similarly to typewriters where the feeding device is moved back into the position at which the line starts and operated through a ratchet device. These previous devices, however, can be automated only with relatively great difficulty. Automatic devices, however, are required for embossing machines which are separately controlled, for instance, as by being connected to an electronic computer or to a reading apparatus.
There is particularly great technical difficulty in producing an identity device with two different kinds of characters, as is customary for such identification means. For example, for the address of the owner of the identity card, characters are used having a height of 2.5 mm and the character space, for instance, is 2.54 mm. For the customer number, stylized machine readable characters are used having a height of 4 mm and the character space is 3.63 mm (1/7"). For this, two separate character stepping devices are required. To achieve this with automation is more difficult.