Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Kurt A Pfahl

Richard A Robinson

Stephen P Buckley

Arthur E Doerflinger

Thomas B Banks

Stanley W Otto

Donna L Hill

Stephen Birkes

John H Hurlburt

Lynn Vandemark

Craig Ritchie Brougher

A machine for vending greeting cards or other personalized or customized products includes audio and video presentations of available products and options available to a customer, provisions for payment and apparatus for automatic delivery of products. Base products such as preprinted forms are stored for selective transfer by a robot device to modifying apparatus such as a printer, modified products being delivered to a delivery receptacle, all operations being under computer control and being changeable as desired for adding or substituting new forms of products.

Computer controlled machine for vending personalized products or the like

A tree ornament is disclosed in which a plurality of images are produced by two-dimensional image formations or three-dimensional objects, with a plurality of lights being energized in timed relation to selectively present the images to view through a window, and with reflecting and transmitting surfaces being used to allow energization of the lights to replace one image with another and/or to superimpose images.

Special light effect visual ornaments

A two-web, dual purpose printing press and method is provided which can be used to 'make ready' and proof gravure rollers on a first web, and to print a sample using the rollers on a second web and under substantially identical conditions during both operational modes. The press includes an interchangeable gravure roller, a pair of impression rollers, (one associated with each of the webs), and structure for selective shifting of the impression rollers between positions wherein each roller alternately forms a web-receiving and printing nip with the gravure roller. A motion-limiting stop arrangement is provided to insure that the respective impression rollers assume a substantially identical position relative to the gravure roller during the respective operational sequences of the press; in this manner printing conditions are uniform during both proofing and sampling.

Two web gravure dual impression cylinder proofing and sampling press and

A novel and improved method of controlling the quality of color fidelity in the printing of multi-colored subject matter is provided by novel and improved automatic densitometer apparatus adapted to automatically scan the successive differently colored blocks of a color control strip printed along one edge of the printed work piece, to automatically make repeated sensings of color density as the scan proceeds, to automatically change the filters required for sensing the density of different colors as the scan proceeds along the control strip, to automatically activate the apparatus for selecting one sensing of color density as being definitive for each relevant block of the control strip, to automatically print a running record of the definitive color densities sensed from different blocks of the control strip in format juxtaposing the item of the record for each such sensing with the corresponding block of the control strip when the record is placed alongside the control strip, to automatically position such record during scanning in appropriate juxtaposition alongside the control strip so that the densities being recorded can be conveniently checked even during the scanning of a remaining portion of the control strip, and to automatically control the progress of the scanning and the occurrence of the other aforementioned functions in response to changes in the color densities being sensed on a continuously iterated basis as the scanning proceeds. The method and apparatus are applicable to multicolor printing involving various numbers or selections of colors.

Automatic densitometer and method of color control in multi-color

Growing community of inventors

Leawood, MO, United States of America

Kurt A Pfahl