Eastman-kodak Company

Industrial Technology Research Institute

James M Papa

Robert G Capurso

Stanley W Stephenson

David M Johnson

William R Markis

Gary M Spinelli

Domenic Maiola

John I Kilburn

Dennis B Schulmerich

Michael T Murray

A tag for an item includes a support having a printable area; a writable display attached to the support, the writable display including a layer of material for displaying information relating to the item, and an image of the item printed on the printable area.

Item tag with liquid crystal display and image

Apparatus for changing the display state of a bistable liquid crystal display on a display tag having a plurality of electrical contact pads connected to a corresponding plurality of electrodes in the liquid crystal display includes a body defining a slot for receiving and locating the display tag with respect to the body; a plurality of contact pins located in the body and being mounted for movement into the slot to contact the electrical contact pads of a display tag located in the slot; drive electronics electrically connected to the contact pins for receiving display command signals from an external source and for applying electrical drive signals to the electrodes of the display when the contact pins are in contact with the electrical contact pads; and operator control means for moving the contact pins into electrical contact with the electrical contact pads and causing the drive electronics to apply the electrical drive signals to the contact pins.

Write head for a display tag having a liquid crystal display

A docking station for reading and writing an electronically writable return reminder tag located on a surface of a rental item, the rental item or the return reminder tag having locating features and the return reminder tag including an electronically writable bistable display, a machine readable code identifying the rental item, and a plurality of conductive pads located on the front side of the tag for writing to the display, includes a body defining complementary locating features for locating the rental item bearing the return reminder tag with respect to the docking station; a scanner for scanning the machine readable code on the return reminder tag; and a plurality of contact pins for contacting the conductive pads of the return reminder tag.

Docking station for writing to electronically writable display

A shelf talker for displaying short and longer term information includes a backplane including a plurality of electrical conductors; a plurality of single character display chips mounted on the backplane in electrical contact with the electrical conductors for displaying the short term information; and a graphic overlay located over the backplane bearing the longer term information and defining apertures for displaying the short term information displayed by the single character display chips.

Shelf talker having short and long term information

A method of writing an electrically writable tag using a hand-held writing device includes the steps of providing an electrically writable tag having a plurality of electrical conductors located on a display surface of the tag, and a mechanical alignment feature including a detent for locating the tag with respect to a hand-held writing device; providing a hand-held writing device having a corresponding plurality of electrical contacts for simultaneously making contact with the electrical conductors of the tag, and a complementary alignment feature with a detent for locating the hand-held writing device with respect to the tag; and locating the hand-held writing device with respect to the tag, using the alignment features, and activating the hand-held writing device to write information on the tag.

Hand-held programmer for programmable liquid crystal display

The present servosystem positions a movable member such as an optical head over a rotating disk with a constant velocity and high positional accuracy by utilizing a fast analog feedback loop that is controlled by a slower digital loop. The analog feedback loop locks the speed of the movable member to the speed of the rotating disk in a spiral recording track. The progress of the movable member is constantly monitored with the digital loop. A velocity error of known magnitude and direction is introduced into the system. When the error exceeds a preset limit an error of the known magnitude but of the opposite direction is introduced. The servosystem thus zig-zags about the desired position with small velocity changes to provide a substantially constant velocity system with high positional accuracy.

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, NY, United States of America

James M Papa