Abstract: An assemble-in-place storage container mounts in the space behind the front seats of an extended cab truck. The container contains bottom, side, front, back and top panels which are configured to form the body of the container, as well as divider panels to provide compartments within the container. The container mounts on the horizontally oriented metallic back supports of the folded down jump seats of an extended cab truck. The bottom panel is sized and shaped to fit over the "footprint" of the folded down jump seats, and side panels are hinged to the bottom panel and are collapsed onto the bottom panel. With the bottom panel in place, the side panels are extended to the vertical; the side panels having sloping front edges conforming to the taper of the back of the truck's seats. The back and front panels are then vertically put into place, and are locked into position by tabs which fit into slots in the side panels.

Abstract: A tent is fabricated from a seamless spherical shell. The floor of the tent is established as a plane interiorly dividing the shell into two chambers. The floor peripherally contacts the inner surface of the shell, and is sealed against the inner surface of the spherical shell. The larger chamber serves as the living chamber, while a smaller air tight chamber is formed between the floor and the shell. The air tight chamber is provided with a valve communicating with the outside environment. When the tent is disassembled, and with the valve opened, the spherical shell will completely deflate and collapse. During erection of the tent, the air chamber valve remains open, and the shell's cap over the floor is manually pulled out away from the tent floor causing a vacuum to form in the smaller airtight chamber. Air immediately flows through the valve filling the air chamber, and by closure of this valve the air is trapped. The air cushions the floor to provide a self inflated air mattress.

Abstract: A billiard cue having a separate handle and shaft utilizes a quick operating connector to join the handle and shaft. The connector consists of male and female sections which are secured in the ends of the handle and shaft. The male section contains a cylindrical bar having an accurately machined diameter which snugly fits into a cylindrical cavity of the female section which is slightly oversized with respect to the male bar's diameter. The male bar and female cavity are axially aligned in the cue sections, and the bar engages the cavity over a linear distance sufficient to ensure accurate alignment of the handle and shaft when joined. Two flats at the end of the male bar provide a reduced diameter portion of the bar tip which fits between partial bulkheads within the female cavity, allowing insertion of the bar into the cavity.

Abstract: In present day propeller driven aircraft, the engine is mounted on slightly resilient engine mounts which in turn are secured to the aircraft fuselage. Under propeller rotation, the developed thrust causes the engine housing to move slightly forward relative to the fuselage due to the resiliency of the mounts. The amplitude of the engine displacement is directly proportional to the magnitude of the thrust, and the present invention measures this displacement and converts it to an indicated value of thrust. A displacement or force balance transducer, remote from the engine proper, is mounted behind the engine on the engine compartment firewall. A dimensionally stable compliant tensile member such as a steel cable having one end bolted to the engine housing and the other end connected to the spring loaded moveable core of the transducer transmits the engine displacement to the transducer.

Abstract: In a fly reel, drag is provided by use a helically wound wire spring mounted coaxially over a fixed post attached to the reel frame. The turns at one end of the helically wound spring loosely contact the fixed post, while at the other end of the spring the turns are in intimate contact with the post. One end of the spring is free and the other end is fixed to a spool axially straddling the spring-post combination. The spool contains a drag adjustment knob whose initial setting determines the angular travel of the spool until a pin on the knob contacts the free end of the spring. As line is stripped from the spool, the spool rotates and the loose turns incrementally tighten about the fixed post.

Abstract: A single sided dc-dc converter utilizes a switched resonant circuit having pulsed currents and voltages. A pair of MOSFET switches are used to alternately charge a capacitor in series with an inductor from an input voltage source, and then to discharge the capacitor through a second inductor into an output capacitor. The charge and discharge currents are in the form of pulses, and flow in the same direction into the output capacitor to directly establish the output voltage. Both the "on" and "off" switching of each of the MOSFET switches is accomplished at zero current.For a given input voltage source, the output voltage of the converter is determined by the size of the output capacitor and the repetition rate of the "on-off" charge-discharge sequences. The voltage output of the converter is monitored, and a controller responsive to changes in the output voltage varies the repetition rate of the charge-discharge cycle to maintain constant voltage output.

Abstract: A shorted dual MR head which is magnetically shielded for the purpose of isolating the dual MR head from extraneous magnetic fields and from long wavelength recorded signals which could cause nonlinear distortion of the dual MR head but not shielded for the purpose of improving linear resolution. The magnetic shields do not significantly affect linear resolution of the dual MR head and can be spaced apart from the dual MR head over a wide range of separation distances limited by factors other than the characteristic bit length of the magnetic signal to be resolved. In one embodiment, at least one shielding element for the dual MR head can be one of the poles or other components of an inductive record head and, together, the two heads can form an integrated thin-film inductive record/MR reproduce head assembly.

Abstract: A longitudinal bar is mountable on a drop-style bicycle handlebar to provide additional comfortable hand positions conducive to the improvement of the cyclist's aerodyanamic profile. The bar is attached to the drop-style handlebar either in, or above, the substantially horizontal plane defined by the rearwardly extending handgrip section of the drop-style handlebar. The ends of the bar are provided with longitudinally slidable clamps for adjusting the length of the bar in attaching it to the drops or to the handgrips of the drop-style handlebar.

Abstract: The invention in one embodiment utilizes a pair of identical high energy permanent magnet dipoles mounted on parallel rotatable shafts. The magnetic dipoles lie in a plane perpendicular to the rotatable shafts, and the shafts are coupled to a drive motor for rotation in opposite directions. The magnetic dipoles gives rise to a resultant field which is the sum of the fields due to the individual dipole magnetic moments. With the dipoles aligned, a field having only a longitudinal component is generated, "longitudinal" being defined as being along the direction of initial alignment. The longitudinal components of the two dipoles add, being in the same direction, while the transverse (i.e. perpendicular to the longitudinal direction) components of the dipole cancel, as they point in opposite directions. In the region of space adjacent to the longitudinally defined direction, the longitudinal oriented field components still add, and the transverse components substantially, if not completely, cancel.

Abstract: An MR head includes two substantially identical MR elements, separated by an insulating layer which has shorting stubs at its ends for electrically shorting the MR elements. A current applied to the MR elements splits into two currents that flow in the same direction through the substantially identical MR elements, to provide mutual bias and to serve as sense currents for detecting change in element resistance. The MR elements are biased to operate in a magnetically unsaturated mode. This results in a "bootstrapping" of short wavelength signals that effectively amplifies the reproduced signal over a broad region of the signal spectrum when the linear spacing between the MR elements is in the range of from one half to one times the half-wavelength of signals recorded on a magnetic recording medium.

Abstract: To remove the air film adherent to a moving tape, rather than have the tape incident upon a steep shoulder of the head, a facet in the contour provides a gradual slope breaking the continuity of the head contour. The break in the contour provides an edge to skive the air adherent to the tape, and the facet provides a gently ramping surface which engages any asperity on the tape surface in a less aggressive manner than occurs when the asperity encounters a shoulder directly. Because of the stiffness of the tape, the tape does not contact the head contour over the length of the facet; the tape spans the contour between the edges of the facet. The air skived from the tape by the facet edge is squeegeed out between the tape and the facet, and a slot in the facet increases the cross sectional area through which the air is expelled. The tape spanning the facet is not in contact with the edges of the slot, the edge related problems of the prior art are avoided by the practice of the present invention.

Abstract: The present invention provides increased stabilization of the magnetization of a single domain thin magnetic film over that attainable in the rectangular thin film known in the prior art by shaping the magnetic film as a rhomboid rather than as a rectangle. Practice of the invention teaches angling the transverse sides of the film with respect to the longitudinal sides either at an angle equal to, or smaller than, the angle at the bias point of the magnetization with respect to the direction of the easy axis, as established by an external bias field. Under these conditions the biased magnetization of the film, being either parallel to, or at a positive angle with respect to the transverse sides of the rhomboid, either generates no charges at the transverse edges of the film, or actually generates charges which produce a field parallel to the longitudinal component of the magnetization which stabilizes the magnetization of the single domain rather than destabilizes it.

Abstract: A magnetoresistive head is fabricated on a ferrite substrate which is both the mechanical support for the head assembly and a soft adjacent layer for biasing the magnetoresistive element of the head. Easy axis bias is supplied by a fixed magnet located in the head coverplate, and the substrate opposite the magnet is recessed and filled with a non-magnetic material to prevent distortion of the fixed magnet field by the ferrite substance.

Abstract: Rather than engage the grooves of a cartridge's splined hub by means of fingers attached to a reel motor shaft, the present invention uses a mechanical coupler mounted on the motor shaft which contacts the spline lands at two places and locks the mechanical coupler position by insertion of a spring loaded tongue into one of the grooves of the spline. This groove is angularly located midway between the lands which contact the mechanical coupler, effecting a "three point" engagement of the mechanical coupler with the hub. The land contacting surfaces and the tongue are chamfered to facilitate engaging the hub for slight off-axial misalignment of the hub and mechanical coupler. The spring loaded tongue forces the spline contacting surfaces of the mechanical coupler into a "zero clearance" fit with the contacted lands of the spline, providing an intimate and backlash free connection between the hub and driving motor.

Abstract: In a recording system utilizing a cross-field head, rather than excite both the field gap and the recording gap with signal and bias excitation as taught in the prior art, the present invention teaches applying bias excitation to both the field gap and the recording gap (as known in the prior art), but applying the signal excitation solely to the recording gap. By following this teaching of the invention, the record zone length is decreased to allow shorter wavelength recording, while the short wavelength recorded signal level is increased by effectively eliminating opposing recorded regions of magnetization in the vertical signal component.

Abstract: To obtain the correct tape wrap angle at the head in a cassette loaded recorder, tape guiding support "outriggers" integral with the head assembly are provided. The outriggers are located on either side of the active portion of the head structure to guide the tape and to establish the tape/head wrap angle independent of the exact locations of the cassette guides. Slots separate the active head structure from each of the outriggers, presenting an edge at each side of the head to skive any air film adherent to the moving tape as it approaches the head's transducer. Additionally, the entire head and outrigger structure is fabricated from the same or mechanically similar materials and has an overall constant area profile contour which wears at a uniform rate due to tape abrasion.

Abstract: In a recorder having two inline heads, such as a record head followed by a reproduce head, it is necessary to insure adequate tape wrap angle at the transducing element of each head. Because the tape is spanned between the two inline heads, the tape leaves the apex of one head at a zero wrap angle and arrives at the apex of the second head with a zero wrap angle. The invention provides outriggers on each head assembly which guide the tape, and teaches placing each transducing element off the apex of its head assembly to maintain adequate wrap angles at the transducing elements of each inline head. The outriggers are provided with slots which skive entrapped air to prevent tape "flying" with attendant loss of contact with the transducing elements. The contours of the outriggers and the lands on which the transducing elements of each head assembly are located form constant area profiles to provide constant wear characteristics for the head assemblies.

Abstract: In a magnetic tape transport where the tape is guided by means of conventional guides, the tape may wander at the surface of the magnetic transducer between limits set by the mechanical parameters of the guides, e.g. the distance between upper and lower flanges of the guides. The present invention teaches tilting the face of the transducer contacting the tape by an angle of 0.5.degree. such that a component of force is generated which slides the tape along the transducer surface. The edge of the tape is then constrained to ride against a wear resistant shoulder mounted on the transducer surface, resulting in the tape being "locked" into position in relation to the magnetic transducer tracks.

Abstract: A particularized cross section for a magnetic recording head provides a constant area wear profile for cooperating magnetic tape. The constant area wear profile results from the "combined" use of a common radius of curvature for both the material bending radius of the tape as well as the tape-contacting surface of the head, taken together with the requirement that the leading and trailing medium-contacting parts of the head form air-skiving edges which are essentially parallel to the force- (or pressure-) direction associated with the tape-contacting interface.

Abstract: A magnetic recording medium is fabricated by the electrodeposition of acicular magnetic particles onto an electrically conductive substrate from a mixture that is continuously dispersed and circulated through the electrodeposition vessel. Electrodeposition is effected at a critical electric field strength so that the particles are aligned in solution, and deposited perpendicular to the substrate surface such that the medium is highly densified. By use of anisotropic particles the resultant medium is adaptable for perpendicular recording, and by use of isotropic particles the resultant medium will support both longitudinal and perpendicular recording.