1. A method of visually identifying an article and its orientation, employing a video data acquisition system having a video camera for taking a picture of the article and having means for requiring, digitizing and identifying signals from the camera as pixels forming the image of a picture comprising the steps of: (a) taking a picture of the article; (b) counting the total number of pixels in the rows, columns and diagonal lines, respectively, of the image of the picture; (c) computing the area of the article determined by the total number of pixels, and the perimeter of the article; and (d) computing the maximum and minimum moments determined by the row, column and diagonal line total pixel counts.