Alps Electric Co., Ltd.

Masaki Sakamoto

Hideki Yorozu

Yuki Oishi

Kazutaka Suzuki

Hideki Naitou

The present invention has an object to provide a information recording medium and an information recording method which permit confirmation of the same photo-portrait image as a photo-portrait image made with coloring ink by irradiating ultraviolet rays or infrared rays although the image cannot be confirmed within the visible region because the image is colorless and transparent within this region. The same photo-portrait image as the photo-portrait image is recorded with ultraviolet ink or infrared ink which emits fluorescence by irradiating ultraviolet rays or infrared rays on a portion other than the recording portion of the photo-portrait image made with the coloring ink on the surface of a substrate.

Information recording medium and information recording method suitable

This invention provides a dot printer which reads a manuscript and prints on a recording medium automatically only by placing a manuscript and a recording medium. A thermal head and an image scanner are provided facing to a platen, a feeding mechanism for feeding a desired manuscript or recording medium between the platen, and the thermal head and the image scanner is provided, an identification marker is formed on the upstream side of feeding of the manuscript, and a controller for controlling the operation is provided so that the identification marker is read using the image scanner to recognize that the medium is a manuscript fed from the feeding mechanism, then, the image scanner starts to read the manuscript.

Dot printer with recording head and scanner mounted on same carriage and

A reading apparatus and a recording apparatus having the reading apparatus which can reduce storage capacity for storing read data and, because the read data processing modes can be switched according to the type of documents to be processed, perform fast and proper document reading operation. If a document to be processed is an image document, the controller operates in the image processing mode in which M pieces of read data are sampled out of N pieces of read data and a mean value of the M pieces of read data is calculated to be stored in the memory as gradation data of one pixel. If the document is a text document, the controller operates in the text processing mode in which read data of one read unit of the image scanner is digitized by a threshold to be stored in the memory. Switching between these two processing modes is performed by the conversion processing operator section in the controller.

Recording apparatus having a text processing mode using a threshold and

A heating elements' row provided in the thermal head is separated into at least three blocks each including a plurality of heating elements. When each heating element is heated by turning on electricity, the last heat accumulation amount of said each heating element is calculated, as well the last sum of heat accumulation amounts in each block is calculated. And, the calculated amount of the sum of the heat accumulation amounts in each block is corrected in accordance with the position of each block in the heating elements' row. Subsequently, the time period for turning on electricity to each heating element is determined based on said calculated amount of last heat accumulation amount of said each heating element and said corrected amount of last sum of heat accumulation amount of each block, thereby adequate control of time period for turning on electricity can be performed so as to response to actual heat accumulation condition in each heating element. As a result, the printing operation is carried out excellently so as not to cause undesirable printing density difference among heating elements laid in a row.

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Iwate-ken, Japan

Masaki Sakamoto