Nemoto & Company, Ltd.

Toyo Jozo Company, Ltd.

Yuzo Ishikawa

Kazuhiro Watanabe

Hideo Misaki

Nobuyoshi Takeuchi

Takashi Matsuzawa

Shigeru Ueda

Kaori Kanesaka

Hirao Nagae

An information reading method includes the steps of irradiating a phosphor activated by neodymium and ytterbium ions with exciting light of a wavelength between 500 nm and 780 nm that can excite the neodymium ions, and reading the information by receiving the light emitted from the phosphor with a photodetector designed to detect light with wavelengths between 840 m and 1100 nm. Consequently, the information recorded using the phosphor activated by neodymium and ytterbium ions can be read with a high performance without using a filter for cutting the exciting light.

Information reading method

A colony counting apparatus includes a reading unit with a visual sensor incorporated therein. The presence of a colony is detected at the end of that colony by moving the reading unit along lines selected at an appropriate pitch and by reading data on the individual points set along each line as logical high or low signals. The values obtained in the above-described counting operation are added and stored in an addition/storage device in a CPU, and the results of addition which are stored in the addition/storage device are output to a suitable display by an outputting device when the counting operation is completed.

Colony counting apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Yuzo Ishikawa