Did You Know...
...that the Eveready Battery began as an invention called the "electric flowerpot," which was a tube with a battery and light bulb inside? The idea was to fasten this gizmo to the side of a flowerpot so it would illuminate the flowers from the bottom. The idea died on the vine and the businessman who licensed the flower pot, Conrad Huber, was left with a pile of useless tubes -- until he found a way to market them as batteries to light the world!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7369180 | Method for processing auxiliary information in a video system A method for processing auxiliary information, such as closed caption or teletext data, in a video system enables an increased number of characters to be displayed per line. According to an exemplary embodiment, a video system (100) includes a tuner (10 | 05/06/2008 |
| 7355654 | Character display control circuit A character display control circuit comprises a selection circuit to select and output, as one of the RGB signals, one of a first voltage, a second voltage lower than the first voltage, and one or more third voltages existing between the first and second voltages; a... | 04/08/2008 |
| 7296289 | Setting or changing an access condition for an access management apparatus and method of a portable electronic device An access management apparatus receives a command message having setting and changing functions, performs corresponding processing, and transmits results. A checking unit checks the presence/absence of a data element to be accessed. Access is permitted based on look... | 11/13/2007 |
| 7289235 | Information processing device, information processing system, method for controlling information processing device, storage medium and control program In order to perform optimal character registration and a printing process depending on a language, in an information processing device connected to a printer having a first registration area and a second registration area as font registration areas, registration amo... | 10/30/2007 |
| 7176929 | Low cost animated sequence function for low cost OSD devices The present invention provides a low cost animation sequence function for OSDs. An animation sequence is produced by changing the attributes associated with a character within the OSD rather than by substituting the character itself. A character may have several dif... | 02/13/2007 |
| 7158139 | Simple on screen display system using mapped ROM generated characters The present invention provides a low cost OSD system with minimal ROM requirements, minimal computing power required from the microcontroller, and minimal I/O port requirements. The OSD system creates a fixed frame around a small set of programmable characters. The ... | 01/02/2007 |
| 7154397 | Patient point-of-care computer system A point-of-care computer system includes a display positioned in a point-of-care location, a computer coupled to the display, and a network coupled to the computer to enable the computer to access information stored in a remote location. ... | 12/26/2006 |
| 7120570 | Methods and apparatus for design of dot matrix visual displays A design tool for choosing and modifying features of a dot matrix display. The design tool allows a user to design and save a character set and then to enter and view text to be displayed using the character set. The user is able to modify features of the display an... | 10/10/2006 |
| 7059695 | Print engine for a pagewidth inkjet printer A print engine for a pagewidth inkjet printer includes a processor component for programming data transfer. A bus writes and reads data to and from various components of the print engine. A page data interface component is connected to the bus for writing compressed... | 06/13/2006 |
| 7057617 | Font memory and font data reading method Font data for each resolution level is stored in a font memory (10). Character specifying addresses A0 to Ax and font resolution levels L0 to Lz are input to output the optimum font data that match the resolution of... | 06/06/2006 |
| 7030870 | On screen display (OSD) The invention relates to the generation of an on-screen display and a control system for the same which allows the known problems in display which can occur to be avoided. Upon change of at least part of an OSD, the system continues until a request to redraw the dis... | 04/18/2006 |
| 6971069 | Method and arrangement for retrieving an entry from an indexed memory A method and arrangement are disclosed for scrolling between entries in an indexed list as a response to scrolling commands given through the activation of selectors. The indexed list is arranged into sections so that all entries of a section have at least one equal... | 11/29/2005 |
| 6678688 | Method and apparatus for composite font generation A font database includes a plurality of font files each of which stores bitmaps associated with a range of characters. The plurality of font files contains only a single version of a bitmap for each character. In a first embodiment, a plurality of composi... | 01/13/2004 |
| 6421032 | Method of creating external characters in image forming apparatus An external character creating method is provided for an image forming apparatus having a display screen. The external character creating method includes the steps of displaying at least a portion of image data in a specifying area on the display screen, ... | 07/16/2002 |
| 6373450 | Method and device for controlling selection using a switch Data, including letters, numerals and marks, are sequentially scrolled on a display. When a switch is pushed, the scroll is interrupted, and then the data being displayed is fixed. An arrangement may be made such that the scroll occurs at a high speed fir... | 04/16/2002 |
| 6281876 | Method and apparatus for text image stretching A method and apparatus for horizontally expanding a video graphics adapter (VGA) text character display image to fully fill the screen of a fiat panel display. Cell lines for each character are remapped to provide expanded cell lines. The flat panel appar... | 08/28/2001 |
| 6229519 | Display controller for communication apparatus and method therefor A radio selective calling receiver having means for receiving a message, and displaying the received message on a display section, the receiver comprising storage means 9 in which the maximum number of alphanumeric, katakana or Kanji which can be displaye... | 05/08/2001 |
| 6131183 | Computer and method for enabling graphic user interface (GUI) control and command line (TTY) control of a computer program The ARC/INFO.RTM. geographic information system (GIS) computer program (28) supports multiple threads of command line (TTY) and graphic user interface (GUI) operations. A TTY operation at the top of a thread enables the program (28) to be controlled from ... | 10/10/2000 |
| 6057813 | Single chip microcomputer having a built-in on screen display device A microcomputer has a plurality of on screen display devices in one chip. Under control of a CPU, display tasks are respectively controlled in the on screen display devices in an independent manner, thereby obtaining a desired display screen on which the ... | 05/02/2000 |
| 6031517 | Multi-color display unit, comprising a control arrangement for color selection A multi-coloured display unit is described for characters having colour indicator signals. The characters can be displayed in a plurality of colours. Without information of the identify of the characters getting lost, the legibility structure is influence... | 02/29/2000 |
| 5929839 | Image display control apparatus An image display control apparatus which can achieve multicolor display for each font. It includes a first memory for storing red, green and blue pattern codes forming an image pattern, a second memory in which bitmap type image pattern data corresponding... | 07/27/1999 |
| 5930408 | Character pattern generation A character processing apparatus for recognizing coordinate information expressing a character, an exterior outline, an interior outline, a horizontal line and a vertical line; classifying the coordinate information expressing a character, the exterior ou... | 07/27/1999 |
| 5838386 | On screen display circuit and position detector In an on-screen display (OSD) circuit and position detector, the OSD circuit includes a menu OSD circuit for outputting video signals Rm, Gm and Bm and switch signal Ym, a pointer OSD circuit for selecting displayed menu items and for outputting video sig... | 11/17/1998 |
| 5640172 | On-screen display circuit An on-screen display circuit comprising a moving clock generator for generating a moving clock signal and a character moving clock signal in response to a vertical synchronous signal, the moving clock signal varying a horizontal display position value, th... | 06/17/1997 |
| 5629722 | Section erasure control apparatus of character generator A section erasure control apparatus for a character generator including a section erasure data receiving circuit for receiving section erasure data a section erasure region control circuit for analyzing the section erasure data and identifying a section e... | 05/13/1997 |
| 5519824 | System and method for storing and displaying font data representing fixed-width and compressed characters A system and method for storing and retrieving fixed-width and compressed characters of at least one font, which includes memory having a plurality of memory addresses for storing instructions and encoded character font data representing fixed-width and c... | 05/21/1996 |
| 5486842 | On-screen display circuit of the interlaced scanning type An on-screen display circuit of the interlaced scanning type comprising a vertical counter for counting a horizontal synchronous signal inputted thereto and outputting the counted values as higher-order bits of a vertical address, a 1-bit counter for coun... | 01/23/1996 |
| 5467109 | Circuit for generating data of a letter to be displayed on a screen A display having a letter portion and a background portion is displayed on a screen. One of the letters and backgrounds portion is displayed with a first color designated by color data stored in a memory, and the remaining one thereof is displayed with a ... | 11/14/1995 |
| 5436670 | Image display apparatus wherein the number of characters displayed is the same regardless of the frequency of the input signal An image display apparatus for displaying an image and characters superposed on the image comprising a synchronizing signal dividing unit for dividing the frequency of an input synchronizing signal to generate a divided synchronizing signal, a character g... | 07/25/1995 |
| 5404436 | Computer method and apparatus for converting compressed characters for display in full size The invention method and apparatus employs font metrics data related to font bitmaps for characters of a desired font. Position offsets of pieces in composite characters are read from the font metrics data and are converted to the appropriate pixel offset... | 04/04/1995 |
| 5355448 | Method of generating dot signals corresponding to character pattern and the system therefor The system for generating dot signals corresponding to a character pattern on the basis of outline information of a character pattern described by only straight lines comprises a section 6 for deciding end points of straight lines constituting outlines on... | 10/11/1994 |
| 5313573 | Apparatus for forming character patterns with line segments A character pattern forming apparatus has a ROM, a RAM, and a CPU. The ROM includes a first memory area for storing a plurality of segment data respectively designating different segments of a character each segment having one or more dots arranged in a r... | 05/17/1994 |
| 5257015 | Flat panel display control apparatus There is provided a flat panel display control device which has the compatibility with CRT display and the function of displaying each character with plurality of dots. A flat panel display apparatus incorporating a video memory (3) for storing the charac... | 10/26/1993 |
| 5202669 | Display control device for superimposing data with a broadcast signal on a television screen A cathode-ray tube control device displays data obtained from a personal computer on the screen of a television receiver in superimposing relation to the picture of a broadcast. Clock pulses are generated, and these are counted in synchronism with the hor... | 04/13/1993 |
| 4922237 | Flat panel display control apparatus There is provided a flat panel display control device which has the compatibility with CRT display and the function of displaying each character with plurality of dots. A flat panel display apparatus incorporating a video memory (3) for storing the charac... | 05/01/1990 |
| 4873514 | Video display system for scrolling text in selected portions of a display In a CRT display system, its screen is divided into a least two partitions or viewports for displaying different data groups, and characters in one of the groups can be vertically scrolled bit by bit in one of the partitions. The partition to be scrolled ... | 10/10/1989 |
| 4772883 | CRT display control system A CRT display control system controls a character display operation on a CRT image screen. The entire character line height is divided into a display allowed raster section and a display inhibited raster section. The display allowed raster section is prov... | 09/20/1988 |
| 4760391 | Tri-state on-screen display system An on-screen character display system includes a tri-state character generator for generating a tri-state character signal having black portions corresponding to the leading and trailing edging portions of the character and a white portion corresponding t... | 07/26/1988 |
| 4742344 | Digital display system with refresh memory for storing character and field attribute data A digital display system includes a refresh store containing character data for display on a raster scan video display device and field attribute data defining attributes of fields of the character data. The character data is stored as character bytes in ... | 05/03/1988 |
| 4740783 | Visual display unit with character overstrike A visual display unit with character overstrike capability includes a text store in which text is stored in data stream form. A formatter formats the stored text and loads character codes into a refresh buffer which together with a character generator dis... | 04/26/1988 |
