The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 26, 1977
Filed:
Dec. 26, 1973
Michael J Cochran, Richardson, TX (US);
Stephen P Hamilton, Garland, TX (US);
Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, TX (US);
Abstract
A thermal line printer includes a semiconductor chip for control of A .times. N heaters arrayed in N groups past which thermally sensitive paper is stepped B times in printing a line of characters in an A .times. B dot matrix. A sequential access memory stores N multibit words, one word for each character to be printed on a given line with a commutator cyclically to read words from the memory A .times. B times for each line to be printed. A ROM has an A .times. B dot matrix code therein for each available character. A time sequencer and decoder connected to the ROM is synchronized with the commutator to produce a different one bit output from the ROM each time each given word is read from memory. A set of N enable circuits leads from the ROM to N groups of heaters. A set of A enable circuits leads from the sequencer to A groups of heaters where one heater in each A group is from one of the N groups. A decoder interfaces the sequencer to the A groups of heaters and to the motor sequentially to enable the heaters in one A group for each memory cycle and in order through the A columns and B rows of the matrix.