1. Apparatus for machine recognition of hand-written or machine printed characters comprising: means for scanning said character; means for generating a matrix of black and white points from said scanned character, said matrix being stored in a storage shift register; means for non-iteratively thinning said matrixed character to generate a centerline representative of said matrixed character; means for removing isolated points in said thinned character matrix; means for filling in discontinuities appearing in said centerline of said matrixed character; means for removing spurious points adjoining said centerline of said matrixed character; means for partitioning said thinned character matrix into a plurality of regions; means for scanning a plurality of areas of said regions, each of said areas comprising a plurality of subregions, wherein said scanned areas overlap a plurality of said regions and wherein said areas each have a center point; means for detecting a pattern of black and white points in each of said scanned areas; means for generating a unique coded value representative of said detected pattern in each of said scanned areas; means for comparing said coded value with a known set of values corresponding to geometrical stroke features until a match is detected; means for generating an output signal indicative of the detection of one of said stroke features, in each of said scanned areas; means for assigning said detected stroke feature to said area containing said center element of each of said scanned areas; means for detecting sequentially said assigned stroke features for each of said plurality of regions; means for comparing said sequentially detected stroke features with a known set of sequences corresponding to characters previously identified; and means for assigning said matrixed character to said previously identified character having stroke sequences most closely corresponding to those detected form said matrixed character.