Did You Know...
...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
PatentStorm News
Make the Most of Our Site
See this month's Top Inventors and Most Cited Patents.
Stay on top of the latest innovations by subscribing to an RSS feed.
Registered users: Manage your profile.
| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7054238 | Signal shaping circuit The present invention relates to a signal shaping circuit which is capable of shaping a returning light signal of a modulated signal whose signal level and signal length are arbitrarily varied such that it can be demodulated. The shaped signal pattern generation cir... | 05/30/2006 |
| 6704550 | Antenna switching circuit and communication system using the same An antenna switching circuit and communication system capable of reducing a high-order harmonic component radiated from the antenna used for transmission and reception. A fundamental wave passes through a signal transmission line between an antenna switch... | 03/09/2004 |
| 6704174 | Magnetic recording and playback device with ESD protection A head substrate and a projection substrate of a head drum comprise a conductive material having a resistance of 1×1010Ω or less and are connected to a metal base so as to be at the ground potential via the metal base and a rotating drum. The... | 03/09/2004 |
| 6703777 | Adjusting method for cathode position of an electron gun and an electron gun for a cathode ray tube In an adjusting method for a cathode position of an electron gun, an apex point of a dome-shaped cathode is detected and then a positional adjustment is executed by moving a first grid in a X-Y direction so that a center of a grid aperture is coincided wi... | 03/09/2004 |
| 6700363 | Reference voltage generator The present invention provides a reference voltage generator capable of operating stably at a low power source voltage, suppressing the increase of a current consumption and providing a stable reference voltage at a high power source voltage, and reducing... | 03/02/2004 |
| 6700405 | Logic circuit and full adder using the same A logic circuit capable of suppressing occurrence of wraparound of signals, capable of reducing power consumption, and in addition achieving a reduction of a circuit scale and an improvement of an operating speed and a full adder using the same, wherein p... | 03/02/2004 |
| 6700851 | Disk cartridge device for universally mounting and positioning disk cartridges having disks of different size diameters A disk cartridge device includes a plurality of disk cartridges with disks having different disk diameters and each being stored in cartridge housings having different sizes, a recording and reproducing device with the plurality of disk cartridges having ... | 03/02/2004 |
| 6697222 | Tape cassette with wide extraction portions and tape drive apparatus Disclosed is a tape cassette including a cassette shell in which tape reels around which a tape-like recording medium is wound are contained; a mouth portion provided in a front portion of the cassette shell in such a manner as to be opened forwardly, upw... | 02/24/2004 |
| 6695682 | Polishing method and polishing apparatus A polishing method executes those serial processes described below: a theoretically ideal amount of removable object is computed; based on the comparison to the profile when actually processing a polishing object via a chemical-mechanical polishing proces... | 02/24/2004 |
| 6695981 | Method for manufacturing luminescent material, luminescent material manufactured by the same manufacturing method, and display substrate and display apparatus having the same luminescent material The present invention provides a method for manufacturing a luminescent material whereby the surfaces of phosphor particles are uniformly coated with glass, and a luminescent material made up of such particles is easily obtainable, a luminescent material ... | 02/24/2004 |
| 6696351 | Semiconductor device having a selectively deposited conductive layer A process of production of a semiconductor memory device having a memory array including memory cells and a peripheral circuit on one substrate comprising the process of forming an interlayer insulating layer covering the memory array and peripheral circu... | 02/24/2004 |
| 6697317 | Recording medium, information reproducing apparatus, information recording apparatus, and information recording and reproducing apparatus A disk 1 comprised by a substrate 11, a signal layer 12 made of aluminum in which pits 14 are formed, and a protective plate 13. The information reproducing apparatus emits an electron beam E from an electron gun 40 to the signal layer 12 of the disk 1, d... | 02/24/2004 |
| 6693036 | Method for producing semiconductor device polishing apparatus, and polishing method A method for producing a semiconductor device, polishing method, and polishing apparatus, suppressing occurrence of dishing and erosion in a flattening process by polishing of a metal film for constituting an interconnection of a semiconductor device havi... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6693258 | Process for producing thin film semiconductor device and laser irradiation apparatus A polycrystalline thin film of good quality is obtained by improving a crystallization process of a semiconductor thin film using laser light. After conducting a film forming step of forming a non-single crystal semiconductor thin film on a surface of a s... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6693863 | Asymmetry correcting circuit and information reproducing apparatus using the same To provide an asymmetry correcting circuit capable of canceling an asymmetry simultaneously with quantization in an ADC and utilizing the dynamic range of the ADC effectively, and also to provide an information reproducing apparatus using such a correctin... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6693839 | Semiconductor memory device A semiconductor memory device which is capable of selectively performing different functions has a chip having a nonvolatile memory capable of rewriting stored data, and a mode switcher disposed on the chip for irreversibly inhibiting data from being writ... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6693674 | Solid-state image-pickup device and method of mounting solid-state image-pickup device A pilot opening to the outside is formed at one side end of a package for a solid-state image-pickup device and a guide opening to the outside is formed at a side end opposite to and approximately in parallel with the one side end of the package. The pilo... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6694251 | Information processing apparatus and method, recording medium, and program The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus including: moving image data storing means for storing moving image data; degree of importance setting means for setting the degree of importance of the moving image data; thinning-out m... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6694198 | Control system, control device and control method In a control system in which a control device and an information processing device are connected to each other with a predetermined data bus, a control system, a control device, and a control method in which the control device can omits many processing pr... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6693935 | Semiconductor laser A semiconductor laser includes semiconductor layers stacked on a substrate, and a pair of resonator end surfaces opposed to each other in the direction perpendicular to the stacking direction. In this semiconductor laser, a light emission side reflecting ... | 02/17/2004 |
| 6691311 | Digital signal receiving apparatus and receiving method A digital signal receiving apparatus for receiving a digital broadcast signal having a first information table and a second information table is disclosed, the first information table representing the relation between physical information of transmission ... | 02/10/2004 |
| 6682965 | Method of forming n-and p- channel field effect transistors on the same silicon layer having a strain effect A method for forming a Field Effect Transistor (FET) within a strain effect semiconductor layer is disclosed, whereby the source and drain of the FET are formed only in the strain effect silicon layer. The FET may be formed as a gate electrode of a p-chan... | 01/27/2004 |
| 6683245 | Electromagnetic shield An electromagnetic shield is provided for locally shielding an unwanted radiation source. A ground pattern is extended on a printed circuit board for surrounding the unwanted radiation source. A rib is extended in an upper case in a pattern corresponding ... | 01/27/2004 |
| 6683699 | Image printing method and apparatus The printed matter for regenerating a three-dimensional image derived from a parallax image string obtained on interpolating shape changes between images constituting the parallax image string is to be produced. An image printing device 1 morphs images co... | 01/27/2004 |
| 6684328 | Method and apparatus for determining compatibility of computer programs An information processing apparatus performs predetermined processing by executing a computer program. A program memory stores two boot addresses #1 and #2, each of which serves as an address from which a basic program including a boot program for perform... | 01/27/2004 |
| 6683846 | Information recording disc having an anti-reflection layer and information recording/reproducing apparatus An anti-reflection coating layer is formed on the surface portion of a recording medium. This enables to obtain a margin for the air gap thickness change when recording/reproducing an information signal using the "near-field technique" as well as minimize... | 01/27/2004 |
| 6680131 | Organic electroluminescent device An organic electroluminescent device of the type comprises an organic layer 5, 5a or 5b, which has a luminescent region and contains at least one styryl compound represented by the following general formula (1) ##STR1## wherein R1 and R2 | 01/20/2004 |
| 6679744 | Method and apparatus for assembling electron gun Disclosed is an electron gun assembling method used for assembling a first electrode having a plurality of beam apertures as opposed to one cathode used as an electron beam emitting source with a cathode structure having the cathode. The method includes: ... | 01/20/2004 |
| 6678462 | Electronic device, method and apparatus for controlling an electronic device, and electronic device control system When a video tape recorder or the like is programmed to record a desired TV program, the programming information is stored in a programming memory. If the remaining storage capacity of the programming memory becomes insufficient to store all programming i... | 01/13/2004 |
| 6677994 | Image processing apparatus method of the same and camera apparatus An image processing apparatus having a compensation value calculating unit, wherein an XOR element compares the signs of a difference A with a difference r and output the difference A as a compensation value when the signs are the same, while decides that... | 01/13/2004 |
| 6678016 | Filter for display device and display device A filter for a display device capable of preventing a reduction of the contrast of a display screen which occurs when the mechanical strength of the CRT is strengthened and the panel glass is made thinner or when an antireflection film is formed, includin... | 01/13/2004 |
| 6674059 | Objective lens and optical pickup By providing an area of a smaller numerical aperture and an area of a greater numerical aperture on an objective lens, forming holograms of different characteristics corresponding to the respective areas, and using diffracted light beams of the same order... | 01/06/2004 |
| 6673526 | Pattern formation method and method and apparatus for production of a semiconductor device using said method A pattern formation method and method and apparatus for production of a semiconductor device using that method which irradiate light from a light source to a phase shifting mask through a fly's-eye lens comprised of an assembly of a plurality of lenses, t... | 01/06/2004 |
| 6673194 | Method and apparatus for surface processing of printed wiring board A printed wiring board having a conductor pattern on which a pre-flux film of a stabilized quality is to be formed using a water-soluble pre-flux liquid. To this end, such an apparatus is used which includes an etching unit 12 for etching lands 5b, 6b for... | 01/06/2004 |
| 6674486 | Signal processor and signal processing method A video signal processor includes a sharpening circuit, a non-correlation detecting circuit, and, optionally, a noise level detecting circuit. The sharpening circuit is capable of receiving an input luminance signal. The sharpening circuit has a transvers... | 01/06/2004 |
| 6674696 | Focus controlling apparatus and method, and optical disc drive A focus controller for focusing a light beam and positioning the focused light beam onto a signal recording layer of a signal recording media is disclosed. The controller comprises a light beam focusing means having a numerical aperture of 0.6 or more; a ... | 01/06/2004 |
| 6674120 | Nonvolatile semiconductor memory device and method of operation thereof A MONOS memory transistor capable of high speed write with a small current and superior in scaling, comprised of substrate (well W), a channel forming region, a first and a second impurity regions SBLi, SBLi+1 comprised of an opposite conductivity type se... | 01/06/2004 |
| 6674106 | Display device such as electro-optic element and thin film transistor and display device manufacturing method A display device includes pixels disposed in a matrix on a transparent base plate. Each pixel includes an opening region, in which an electro-optic element for emitting light through the base plate is formed, and a non-opening region, in which a thin film... | 01/06/2004 |
| 6670753 | Flat panel display with gettering material having potential of base, gate or focus plate A flat panel display is provided including a baseplate for carrying a first potential, the baseplate having emitters for emitting electrons positioned thereon and a faceplate for carrying a second potential, the faceplate having phosphors thereon. The bas... | 12/30/2003 |
| 6668905 | Aluminum nitride/aluminum base composite material and method of producing the same A method for producing an aluminum nitride/aluminum base composite material comprising the steps of; (A) charging aluminum nitride powder into a container provided in a molten metal pressure apparatus, (B) applying pressure to the aluminum nitride powder ... | 12/30/2003 |
