Abstract: A system for use with equipment designed for transmitting a relatively wideband signal over two or more relatively narrowband circuits so as to provide good overall system reliability even though the relability of the individual narrowband circuits is poor.

Abstract: A parking system for vehicles is disclosed. The system includes a special sign that displays information about a particular parking space, a parking meter into which the displayed information is entered that accumulates parking information in accordance with the entered displayed information, and a terminal that receives and process the parking information accumulated by the parking meter.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for processing a radiation image in a radiation image recording system in which a stimulable phosphor is stimulated with a scanning stimulating ray and the light emitted from the stimulable phosphor upon stimulation by the stimulating ray is detected by a photodetector which gives an output to be processed and used for recording a visible image on a recording medium. The radiation image of the frontal chest is gradation processed. The gradation processing is characterized in that the density at the boundary of the heart and the lungs of the image on the recording medium is lowered to lower the contrast of the heat and raise the contrast of the lungs.

Abstract: A pulse width modulated digital-to-analog converter for utilization in low voltage, integrated circuit speech synthesis circuitry. A digitally programmable shift register is utilized to generate a pulse, which is generally related to the magnitude of a digital signal. A programmable delay circuit provides finer resolution by converting the least significant digital bits of data into pulse width information of shorter duration than the minimum pulse width generated by the controllable shift register. Pulse width information generated by the shift register and delay circuit is applied to the bases of two crossconnected transistors to drive a speaker or voice coil.

Abstract: A method for determining the precise exposure for a photoresist coating by measuring the coating thickness with a microspectrophotometer that provides data for plotting a nearly sinusoidal curve of percent reflectivity versus wavelength. The nominal exposure derived from the thickness measurement is then corrected to a precise value by extrapolation and normalization of the curve at the photosensitive wavelength of the photoresist.

Abstract: The individual energy monitor in a multiple unit complex includes means for measuring the temperature differential at the inlet and outlet of each consuming unit. An on-site microprocessor functioning as a muliple meter unit is coupled to all such consuming units and stores the temperature differential with appropriate processing to record the heat usage during a known time. The microprocessor meter can store the individual energy usage of many consuming units and can be remotely or locally interrogated for purposes of collecting of the necessary data when and as required for billing and the like with equitable allocation of costs among the units based on such individual energy usage. The microprocessor meter continuously, sequentially and cyclically reads the inlet/outlet temperature sensors.

Abstract: In a data processing apparatus including an instruction register and an instruction decoder connected therewith, when a designation instruction (operand changing instruction) is set in the instruction register, the operand (the code of source or destination) of the designation instruction is registered in a source address register or a designation address register connected to the instruction register through a gate circuit. The registers produce control signals through decoders respectively for selecting predetermined operands. When the designation instruction is decoded by the instruction decoder a first (for source) and a second (for destination) flip-flop circuits which are connected to the output terminal of the instruction decoder are set. The outputs of these flip-flop circuits are applied to the negative input of an AND gate circuit connected to the instruction decoder.

Abstract: Data converter for a speech synthesizer system wherein encoded formant parameters as stored in a memory are decoded and transformed or converted to reflection coefficients in real time by means of a circuit implementing a Taylor series type approximation. The reflection coefficients are then quantized and input to a speech synthesizer which utilizes quantized reflection coefficients to synthesize speech. The use of the coded formant frequency speech data which inherently contains more speech intelligence than reflection coefficient speech data enables a speech synthesizer system which utilizes quantized reflection coefficients to operate at a significantly lower bit rate than would otherwise be possible where reflection coefficients are employed as the speech data stored in the memory.

Abstract: A speech synthesis circuit is provided with a variable frame length data converter and the speech synthesizer is preferably integrated on an integrated circuit chips. The variable frame length data converter reduces the amount of data required to synthesizer human speech at a given quality level. Preferably, a full frame of data includes, a pitch parameter, an energy parameter, a repeat bit and a plurality of speech coefficients. Each parameter or coefficient has a preselected length, but each frame has a variable number of parameters or coefficients associated therewith. The parameters and coefficients are encoded and a particular code of the pitch parameter indicates that the speech is to be unvoiced. An unvoiced frame includes fewer coefficients that a voiced frame and the converter detects this particular pitch parameter and automatically sets the unsent coefficients to zero.

Abstract: A sensing apparatus for detecting impedance changes in a variable impedance matrix keyboard. A microcomputer is utilized to control the basic key intersection scanning and for accurately calibrating and adjusting the sensing threshold of the sense amplifier prior to testing each key intersection so that the effects of stray impedance and varying voltage levels may be compensated for. The micro computer supplies sense amplifier sensitivity threshold selection address codes to set the sensing level for the amplifier. Trial drive pulses are applied to a reference capacitor and are gated to the sense amplifier while the sensing level thereof is varied until no output is obtained. This effectively adjusts the sensing circuits for variable voltage power fluctuations occurring over a short time and compensates for variable capacitive effects not associated with actual key switch movements.

Abstract: An electromagnetic flowmeter in which fluid to be metered passes through a flow tube to intersect a magnetic field whereby the voltage induced in the fluid is transferred to a pair of electrodes mounted in the flow tube to yield a flow-induced signal having a random noise component. This field is established by an electromagnet supplied with an excitation current creating a magnetic field that is alternately turned "on" and "off" at a low frequency drive rate. The resultant flow-induced signal is sampled during each "on" and "off" field condition, successive differences therebetween serving to develop an analog output signal having a random noise content.

Abstract: A digital speech interpolation system is combined with an adaptive differential PCM (ADPCM), employing a speech detector for detecting speech signals and for discriminating voiced and unvoiced sounds. An adaptive quantization bit assignment to the speech is adopted to cope with any freeze-out condition. And further PCM speech signals with 8 KHz sampling are applied to ADPCM after shifted 250 Hz down and then converted into 6 KHz sampling frequency, thereby attaining a total gain of about 7 without degrading speech quality.

Abstract: A system for the measurement and control of the rate of BTU input to a gas burner wherein a signal is generated corresponding to the square root of the product of the burner inlet pressure multiplied by the in-situ density olf the gas, which, multiplied by a signal of constant value, corresponds to the mass flow of gas to the burner. This signal is then multiplied by a second signal of constant value to generate a signal corresponding to the rate of BTU input to the burner and which is compared with a set point signal to regulate the mass flow of gas to the burner as required to maintain the rate of BTU input to the burner at set point.

Abstract: There is disclosed a decimator structure which incorporates the cascade of an FIR filter with a low pass recursive filter. The input to the decimator is obtained from a high rate analog to digital converter. The output from the decimator is a low rate digital signal having an increased word length. The decimator serves to reduce the word rate and increase the word length of the output digital signal of the analog to digital converter. In this manner, the low rate digital signal at the output of the decimator can be easily accommodated by the telephone system. The decimator described does not require conventional hardware multipliers and hence, affords efficient and economical circuit components which can be implemented by conventional integrated circuit techniques. A register further reduces the pulse rate for transmission.

Abstract: An A.C. electric power usage measuring and display system using microcomputer based digital processing. Power usage pulses optically sensed from a watthour meter rotary disc and time pulses sensed from the 60 Hz A.C. power line are input to a microprocessor that is programmed to calculate and display the day of the week 1 to 7, the time of day on a 24-hour clock basis, the total watthours and kilowatthours since the start of a billing period on a decimal basis, the peak interval watthours and kilowatthours on a decimal basis, the peak interval start time and end time on a 24-hour clock basis for a peak interval of predetermined time, the peak power demand in kilowatts on a decimal basis, the day of the peak demand on a weekly 1 to 7 basis, the time of the peak demand on a 24-hour clock basis, and the present demand in kilowatts on a decimal basis.

Abstract: A device for providing real time speech compression and expansion and method therefor which enables speech data, sampled at a predetermined rate, and consisting of a preselected number of bits per sample, to be compressed in real time by a factor of approximately 2:1, and upon decompression, to be essentially indistinguishable from the original digitized speech. In particular, the apparatus employs a method which involves the digitizing of the input data, determining the maximum amplitude of the data over a short given period, compressing the data by dividing the largest amplitude constant from the data over the given period to obtain a data sample, and storing the reduced data sample and corresponding amplitude constant or gain factor in a suitable storage medium. In the preferred embodiment, the storage medium is a rotating memory or a recirculating shift register.

Abstract: In order to prevent errors and instability which may occur in a speech analysis and synthesis apparatus when the normalized predictive residual power falls to low levels, for example in high-pitched speech, the calculation of linear predictor coefficients from the autocorrelation coefficients of the speech sound is stopped when the normalized predictive residual power falls below a predetermined threshhold level. Either a variable stage synthesis filter is used having its number of stages determined by the number of linear predictor coefficients actually calculated, or a fixed number of stages can be used and a zero value filter stage coefficient supplied to those stages in excess of the number of coefficients calculated. Degradation of speech quality due to quantization and transmission errors can be alleviated by computing the normalized predictive residual power on the synthesis side from the transmitted predictor coefficients and using it to excite the input to the synthesis filter.

Abstract: A voice synthesizer that is responsive to sequences of digital input command words to phonetically synthesize human speech. The system includes control circuits that are responsive to the input command words to introduce an articulated silent phoneme into the speech pattern, vary the duration of each phoneme produced, as well as to vary the overall rate and volume of the speech generated. In addition, the design utilizes inflection assignment for individual phonemes and also employs a glottal waveform which is more representative of human glottis action. The invention also incorporates resonant suppression into the vocal tract to simulate the dampening effect due to the opening of the glottis, and provides closer simulation of human energy content at higher frequencies to improve the quality of the speech generated.

Abstract: Partitioning, paging, and segmentation techniques are employed with virtual memory to provide more secure and efficient storage and transfer of information. The virtual memory is divided into a plurality of partitions with real memory storage provided by paging the plurality of partitions. User programs are segmented into logical units and stored in assigned partitions thereby isolating user programs and data. Unsegmented programs may be run by storage in a partition with direct addressing. Segment descriptors including partition, base, and bound are utilized in accessing memory. User domains are expandable by temporarily passing descriptor parameters from one routine to another with access flags limiting access thereto. By shrinking passed descriptors the receiving routine can be restricted to only a portion of the information defined by the descriptor.

Abstract: A signal pattern recognition system includes a reference pattern memory storing plural reference data patterns against which input patterns are compared for recognition. The reference data patterns are formed by merging training patterns together. Each training pattern, to be accepted for merging, must match the previously merged patterns by a threshold amount. The threshold is automatically varied as the number of previously merged training patterns increases. If a predetermined number of successive training patterns is below the threshold, the training process is repeated, from the beginning, for the reference pattern which generates the errors. The system automatically trains each reference pattern with the same number of training patterns to assure uniformity when input data patterns are compared for recognition.