Sony Corporation

Kiyotaka Dochi

Shigemichi Honda

Kiyosuke Suzuki

Hikaru Kobayashi

Hitoshi Kamoda

Hideki Wanami

Mitsuyoshi Shindo

Sadao Maeyama

Akio Hitachi

Yoshihiro Tahara

An ink ribbon cartridge includes spools each including a ratchet gear in one end portion. A cartridge body includes integrally formed resilient engagement pieces each including a ratchet portion that engages and disengages the ratchet gear of the respective spool and a compressed portion that is compressed by a compressing portion of a thermal transfer printer apparatus. When the ink ribbon cartridge is installed in the thermal transfer printer apparatus, the resilient engagement pieces behave such that the compressed portions are compressed by the compressing portions of the thermal transfer printer apparatus. Thereby, engagement between the ratchet gears of the respective spools and the ratchet portions is released, and the spools become rotatable in the cartridge body.

Ink ribbon cartridge

A photographic apparatus is described which outputs a photographed image immediately to paper by a simple operation. The photographic apparatus includes an electronic camera for electronically acquiring an image, a connection base for removably connecting the electronic camera thereto, the connection base having a function of reading out image data from the electronic camera while the camera is connected thereto, and a printing section for acquiring the image data from the connection base and outputting an image based on the image data to paper.

System and apparatus for facilitating printing of images from an electronic camera

A slide feeder, a slide system and a slide feeding method are disclosed. Conventional slide feeders are incapable of feeding the same slide mounts repeatedly to an external appliance with no help by a human hand, accordingly are unsuited to a scanning work at a high speed and incapable of separating slides stably at a feeding time. To overcome these problems, the present invention comprises feeding slide mounts stocked in a first slide stock section to an external appliance and stocking slide mounts discharged from the external appliance into a second slide stock section in a first operation mode, and feeding and stocking the slide mounts reversely in a second operation mode. Furthermore, the slide mounts are carried in a feeding direction with a rotating force of a roller. Moreover, the slide mounts are separated with a separating pad at a feeding time.

Slide feeder, slide system and slide feeding method

An electrostatic printing apparatus of the ion-flow type for printing an image on record paper in response to an information signal includes a corona generator for generating ions; a back electrode over which the paper travels for producing a bias potential to cause the generated ions to flow from the corona generator toward the back electrode onto the recording paper; a control electrode interposed between the corona generator and the back electrode for controlling the flow of ions therebetween and including a plurality of apertures through which the ions are adapted to flow; and a control signal generator for supplying a control signal to the control electrode to cause the latter to control the amount of ion flow through each aperture, in response to the level of the information signal, to a first amount corresponding to an area on the paper which is black, a second amount corresponding to an area on the paper which is white, or at least one other amount corresponding to at least one area on the paper which is gray, with different shadings available. In one embodiment, the control signal generator supplies the control signal to the control electrode to cause the latter to control the area of ion flow through each aperture and, in another embodiment, the control signal generator supplies the control signal to the control electrode to cause the latter to control the time within which ions flow through each aperture.

Electrostatic printing apparatus

Apparatus for thermally printing images, such as color images, on a print medium. The medium is moved repeatedly from a reference position through a printing region, as by rotating the medium on a platen. Thermal print elements are disposed at the print region and are selectively energizable to cause images, such as color images, to be printed. A movable web of thermally transferable material has a run interposed between the print medium and the thermal elements at the print region. In one embodiment, the web is provided with successive frames of respectively different colors of thermally transferable material arranged in repeated sequence. Energizing signals are supplied to the thermal elements representative of the image to be printed; and an image is printed in a color corresponding to the color frame then disposed at the printing region. Successive passes of the print medium are made in order to print images of the remaining colors in the sequence of frames on the web.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Kiyotaka Dochi