Kowa Company Limited

Akio Ohtani

Yuji Nagura

Hideaki Iwase

Kiyoshi Sekine

An apparatus for recording an image having a size larger than a television image of one frame including a thermal head having a length which is equal to the longitudinal length of the television image of one frame. An image signal to be recorded is supplied to the thermal head, while a heat sensitive record paper unwound from a paper roll is fed through the thermal head at a constant speed. In this manner an elongated image having a width equal to the longitudinal length of the television image of one frame and a length longer than the lateral length of the television image of one frame is recorded on the heat sensitive record paper. The length of the recorded image is limited only by length of the heat sensitive record paper. In a preferred embodiment, the length of the thermal head is made equal to three times the longitudinal length of the television image of one frame and the image signal to be recorded is stored in a memory. Pixel signals of corresponding scanning lines of three television images of one frame arranged side by side are simultaneously read out and the read out pixel signals are supplied to heater elements of the thermal head.

Apparatus for recording image having size larger than television image

An image recording apparatus of a type using a heat sensitive record paper including a thermal head having a number of heat generating resistors aligned in a line extending in a width direction of the record paper which is fed under the thermal head at a constant speed, and a driving and controlling circuit for supplying heating currents to respective resistors in accordance with an image signal to be recorded. The driving and controlling circuit generates pre-heat pulses whose pulse width is changed in accordance with desired background level of an image to be formed, and record signals for reproducing gray levels of respective dots in the image. Each record signal is composed of a plurality of record pulses having different pulse widths corresponding to weights of digits of a binary image signal.

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Hino, Japan

Akio Ohtani