Fuji Photo Film Company, Limited

Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Kazuhiko Yanagihara

Takeshi Nakamura

Tadashi Miyakawa

Kazuhiko Akimoto

Mitsuaki Shioji

Hisao Oishi

Masahiro Ohnishi

Shigeo Harada

Nobumitsu Takehara

Jun Arakawa

Hideo Takeda

Sugihiko Tada

Isamu Hatanaka

Tsunehiko Takahashi

A color image recording apparatus employing a liquid crystal shutter array in which a color picture can be recorded with high quality using a small-sized apparatus and without requiring complex operations. A liquid crystal shutter array of the apparatus includes pixel electrodes and a shutter common electrode disposed in opposition to the pixel electrodes with a gap therebetween filled with a liquid crystal, a pair of transparent substrates supporting the pixel electrodes and the shutter common electrode by sandwiching the pixel electrodes and the shutter common electrode therebetween, and polarization plates stacked on the respective outsides of the transparent plates. A color liquid crystal layer is stacked on the liquid crystal shutter array constituted by first and second common electrodes disposed in opposition to each other with the gap therebetween filled with an ECB mode liquid crystal, and a pair of transparent substrates supporting the common electrodes.

Image recording apparatus utilizing an ECB mode liquid crystal

A liquid crystal shutter array requiring no separate focusing lens system. Microlenses for focusing the light incident upon a matrix of pixel electrodes are formed in a transparent substrate of the shutter assembly. A refractive index of light of each of the microlenses is set in a manner such that the incident angle .theta. of the light incident on the liquid crystal of the shutter through the microlenses satisfies; ##EQU1## where P, a, and d respectively represent the size of each of the photomasks, the length of a portion wherein each of the photomasks and corresponding ones of the pixel electrodes overlap, and the thickness of the transparent substrate on the light output side.

Liquid crystal shutter array having microlenses corresponding to the

For recording an image on a photosensitive material with the employment of a liquid crystal device, the device used therein is conventionally constructed so as to modulate an amount of light rays transmitted therethrough or reflected thereby commonly by the control of an amount of electric voltage impressed to the liquid crystal device and/or impression timing or frequencies thereof. In this instance, although the light rays irradiated are considered normally as parallel, they are not intact strictly parallel light rays, and consequently unless the light rays transmitted from the device are converged by Selfoc lens arrays and the like, sufficient resolution can hardly be obtained on the photosensitive material on account of the light rays still having comparatively large diffusion coefficients. Since the liquid crystal device made in accordance with this invention is provided with its own image formation abilities, contact exposure with the photosensitive material is possible, and image formation optical systems which have been used in conjunction with the device is safely and advantageously eliminated, whereby parallelism limitations imposed on the irradiated rays can be reduced, and optical mechanisms therefor could be compact and have remarkably improved efficiencies.

Liquid crystal device having the microlenses in correspondence with the

A photosensitive material containing a hydrophilic pigment is exposed to light to form a pigment pattern defining a particular image. The photosensitive material is brought into intimate contact with an image receiving material having a pigment fixing layer. The mutually contacting materials are heated so that the pigment may be transferred from the photosensitive material to the pigment fixing layer. A pigment diffusion assistant, is supplied to an area between the mutually contacting materials before they are heated for pigment transfer. The diffusion assistant spreads along a line along which the two materials are in contact with each other and promotes the transfer of the pigment.

Process for thermal development and transfer

A method and apparatus for developing and transferring an image from a sheet of thermally developing photo-sensitive paper N containing a mobile pigment to a sheet of print paper P containing a pigment fixer, comprising a thermal developer 4 of the photo-sensitive paper, means for overlaying the photo-sensitive and print paper, a heater 8 for transferring the mobile pigments from the developed photo-sensitive paper to the print paper, and a separator 54 for peeling apart the photo-sensitive and print papers.

Thermal developing and transferring method

A process for reclaiming a photographic coupler from an aqueous oil-in-water emulsion of a coupler solvent oil having an oil-soluble photographic coupler dissolved therein comprising separating the coupler solvent oil containing the photographic coupler dissolved therein from the aqueous oil-in-water emulsion, and subjecting the separated coupler solvent oil containing the photographic coupler dissolved therein to a high vacuum molecular distillation whereby only the coupler solvent oil is removed as a distillate.

Oil soluble photographic coupler reclamation process

A measuring cylinder into which liquid is supplied is provided with pressure transmitters for sensing the liquid pressure corresponding to the amount thereof. The pressure transmitters are connected with a pressure transformer to transform the pressure into an electric signal for controlling valves to stop and start the supply of liquid into the cylinder. The pressure transmitters are located in the cylinder at different levels and switched to be selectively operated in combination with the pressure transformer. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the shape of the cylinder is designed so that the diameter thereof increases discretely from the lower part to the upper part thereof. One of the pressure transmitters is located at the bottom of the cylinder and the others are located at levels substantially the same as those at which the diameter of the cylinder increases.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Kazuhiko Yanagihara