...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 |
| 5483355 | Pixel correctional and smoothing method An improved method for providing a more faithful and pleasing rendition of a pixel pattern is described herein. This method first places the original pixel pattern in a bit mapped memory. A small portion of this bit mapped pattern, called an input tile, a... | 01/09/1996 |
| 5463478 | Image processing method and apparatus An image processing apparatus prevents an increase in random noise and the like produced by distributing a transformation error, which is produced at the time of a level-number transformation, to unprocessed pixel data. Error data Xn is added t... | 10/31/1995 |
| 5442462 | Apparatus and method for smoothing images Apparatus for image noise reduction which employs an adaptive, acuity-preserving, multi-directional and multi dimensional smoothing method. The method and apparatus of the present invention are applicable, inter alia, for (a) adaptive spatial noise reduct... | 08/15/1995 |
| 5438426 | Image information processing apparatus An information processing apparatus includes a scanner device for reading documents M as image information, and a filing device for separating the image information thus read into groups and filing each group of information as a block of document data. Th... | 08/01/1995 |
| 5422964 | Method and device for spatial filtering of digital images decoded by transformation of block Coding and decoding of digital images by transformation of pixel blocks reduce the data bit rate. Transformation of blocks leads to discontinuities in brightness level for pixels bordering on block boundaries. These discontinuities are detected for each g... | 06/06/1995 |
| 5408337 | Reduction of moire by adaptively selecting a smoothing filter for smoothing halftone image portions, based on evaluation of blocks of transformation factors resulting from discrete cosine transformed pixel data blocks An image processing apparatus in which a moire occurring in a half tone area can be eliminated by a suitable filter. A plurality of data blocks comprising N*N pixel data are transformed by means of a two-dimensional orthogonal transform so as to obtain an... | 04/18/1995 |
| 5398119 | Photoelectric conversion device's shading correction circuit A shading correction circuit for correcting the shading distortion of a photoelectric conversion device including a plurality of arrayed photocells, has a memory for storing data on the output characteristics of each pixel, represented by image signals ha... | 03/14/1995 |
| 5396346 | Image processing method and apparatus using rounding processing An image processing apparatus and method capable of suppressing noise and improving the S/N ratio of a processing output signal when a color signal representing color image data is processed. The RGB.fwdarw.YUV converter is comprised of conversion units 2... | 03/07/1995 |
| 5377019 | Document reading apparatus having a function of determining effective document region based on a detected data A document reading apparatus which can determine an effective image pickup area containing no object such as operator's hands or fingers pressing a document and rectify image data prior to imaging operation, making use of a difference of the object from t... | 12/27/1994 |
| 5335086 | Method of and apparatus for eliminating pin holes A target region and a pin hole size are specified in a block copy image, which is divided into plural separate regions. The size of each separate region in the target region is calculated and compared with the pin hole size. The separate region smaller th... | 08/02/1994 |
| 5331432 | Image forming apparatus An apparatus for forming an image with modulated image lights which are obtained by modulating an image light in accordance with image signals, including a reference pattern signal generation circuit, a comparator to compare image signals with a reference... | 07/19/1994 |
| 5329382 | Image scanner A document image scanner that converts scanned images for output as bilevel images is provided with a bilevel image filter. The bilevel image filter counts the number of continuous pattern elements in each direction, vertical, horizontal and diagonal, fro... | 07/12/1994 |
| 5329381 | Automatic engraving method and apparatus An automatic engraving system scans an image such as a photograph, samples and resizes the image to provide a masterized gray scale data base of the image. The image is then logarithmically corrected and noise is removed from the image using the Outlier n... | 07/12/1994 |
| 5325210 | Shading data accepting system in image readers Because of using as a light source a halogen lamp which is well stabilized in terms of both the quantity of light and the spectral ratio, it is unnecessary to read shading data whenever the reading of an image is initiated. The shading data can be read wi... | 06/28/1994 |
| 5321528 | Image pick-up device correcting offset errors from a plurality of output amplifiers A multi-chip linear image sensor for use in, for example, a facsimile machine or a photocopier comprises several chip image sensors, each including photosensors and an output amplifier. To correct for the offset error of the output amplifier caused by pro... | 06/14/1994 |
| 5317420 | Noise elimination apparatus for eliminating noise components having a high density and a low density Color image data of which background is removed is converted into monochrome data and noise in the monochrome data is roughly discriminated in a first noise discrimination process. At the same time, the color and density of an attentional pixel, informati... | 05/31/1994 |
| 5311328 | Image processing apparatus for performing an edge correction process and digital copying machine comprising said image processing apparatus therefor An image processing apparatus performs an edge correction process for image signals of respective pixels sequentially inputted, each image signal having a density level corresponding to a pixel. An edge amount detector of the image processing apparatus ca... | 05/10/1994 |
| 5301038 | Image processor and method for processing pixel data An image processor has image processing logic for detecting pixel data representing stepped chrominance or luminance transitions characteristic of staircase aliasing in a source image and for producing an output image including selective antialiasing on t... | 04/05/1994 |
| 5296942 | Method and apparatus for inspecting lightness on the surface of an object An appratus for inspecting lightness on the surface of an object having at least first and second surface portions different in lightness, wherein an image of the first and second surface portions of the object are taken under appropriate illumination, th... | 03/22/1994 |
| 5293433 | Method and device for detecting patterns adapted automatically for the level of noise In detecting patterns in data arranged in a spatial field of one, two or higher dimension, a pattern contrast signal is evaluated which measures the similarity to the pattern of the data around a location in the spatial field. The pattern is subsequently ... | 03/08/1994 |
| 5289294 | Image processing apparatus An image processing apparatus comprises a first correction part for correcting an error of an input multilevel tone data so that a corrected data having a speficied number of bits is supplied, a multilevel rendition part for generating a multilevel rendit... | 02/22/1994 |
| 5270835 | Method for forming halftone screen and apparatus therefor This invention is a method for forming halftone screen to prepare a multi-color separated halftone gradation image which is printable and reproducible by superposing an image signal obtained by scanning an original comprising continuous-tone color images ... | 12/14/1993 |
| 5262873 | Image signal correcting in image data processing requiring only small memory capacity An image signal correcting circuit device includes an A/D conversion unit for converting an analog image signal output from an image reading unit into a digital signal, a storage unit for storing correction data, and a correction unit for performing corre... | 11/16/1993 |
| 5260809 | Shading-compensation method and device in image processing In an image processing system in which shading-compensation for eliminating shading-distortion contained inevitably in image light directed to an image sensor via optical systems is carried out, at least two latch unit for temporarily storing comparative ... | 11/09/1993 |
| 5251272 | Image signal processing method and apparatus with correction for a secondary light source effect A method and an apparatus for processing an image signal generated in an image reading apparatus comprising a light source for illuminating a document, an optical system, and an optical detector for detecting a light which is reflected at a reading point ... | 10/05/1993 |
| 5226097 | Image recognizer and method for recognizing image An image recognizer which recognizes an image signal representing a mark on a mark sheet which has been written in a predetermined format judges whether or not the image signal may be considered to be constituted in accordance with the predetermined forma... | 07/06/1993 |
| 5223951 | Method of and apparatus for eliminating false image A reference original having a reference image is prepared and photoelectrically read with an image reader. The image thus obtained includes a true image and a false image which is called as a ghost or a flare. The relationship between the true image and t... | 06/29/1993 |
| 5214517 | Digital halftoning with correlated minimum visual modulation patterns A digital halftone image is produced by providing a binary bit image pattern having a minimum visual noise for each density level in the image, and the binary bit patterns being correlated in a manner that reduces visual noise resulting from transitions b... | 05/25/1993 |
| 5210623 | Apparatus and method for quantizing and/or reconstructing multi-dimensional digital image signals The method and apparatus of the present invention performs the quantization, sampling, and final digital image signal reconstruction in a way that reduces quantization artifacts such as contouring while retaining desired spatial (temporal) frequency respo... | 05/11/1993 |
| 5200841 | Apparatus for binarizing images The invention provides an image binarizing apparatus which includes multi-value image window circuitry for retrieving multi-value image data; a first binarizing circuit for binarizing the multi-value image data in accordance with a variable threshold dete... | 04/06/1993 |
| 5199085 | Apparatus for restoring original image from degraded image An image restoration apparatus comprises an image display device for displaying an image estimated as a nondegraded original image, a lens system for focusing the estimated image displayed on the image display device, an image input means for photographin... | 03/30/1993 |
| 5194969 | Method for borderless mapping of texture images A method of transformation of any random sample of a surface texture pattern into a replicatable unit for computer graphics applications that can join together without borders to cover any desired surface area. The present invention is particularly well s... | 03/16/1993 |
| 5191446 | Image data transmission system An image data transmission system performs a coding of a plurality of picture elements in units of blocks. In order to prevent a deterioration of an image quality caused due to a loss of a packet cell on a transmission line without increasing a volume of ... | 03/02/1993 |
| 5185673 | Automated image calibration A document processing system (DPS) having a closed feedback loop for improving the quality of the printed form of images that have been scanned into the DPS by scanners. The DPS includes a print path. The closed feedback loop automatically calibrates the ... | 02/09/1993 |
| 5172247 | High speed digital error diffusion process for continuous tone image-to-binary image conversion The invention is a high speed error diffusion process consisting of repetitive computational cycles in which a binary print value is determined from an error-diffused pixel in a continuous tone image. In each cycle, the computation of the previous pixel e... | 12/15/1992 |
| 5166810 | Image quality control system for an image processing system An image quality control system for an image processing system for producing an image of high quality by removing noise and mesh-dot components from image input signals representing a scanned original image, the image quality control system comprises a lo... | 11/24/1992 |
| 5151796 | Image reading apparatus having a D/A converter with a controllable output Image reading apparatus having a D/A converter with a controllable output includes a light source for illuminating an original image. A reading device is provided for photoelectrically reading the original image illuminated by the light source and generat... | 09/29/1992 |
| 5151794 | Image processing method A image processing method smooths edges. An image is represented as pixels. A plurality of groups of pixels are formed. A median is calculated for each group, and a median of medians is calculated. Pixels in groups are altered according to the median of m... | 09/29/1992 |
| 5150429 | Image processor with error diffusion modulated threshold matrix An image processor performs error diffusion by thresholding an incoming gray pixel to black or white, comparing the difference between the black or white print value and the incoming pixel gray level and superimposing the difference on the next pixel gray... | 09/22/1992 |
| 5140444 | Image data processor An image data processor including various subprocessors arranged in a pipeline for carrying out functions such as pixel normalization, background suppression, spot and void removal, image scaling, and size detection.... | 08/18/1992 |