Abstract: An automatic baggage claiming apparatus for use in an airport, train station, or bus station controls removal of baggage from a secured area. The present invention scans a baggage tag and a claim check in order to obtain the baggage tag identifier and the claim check identifier, respectively. The present invention compares the tag identifiers and provides a signal if the tag identifiers are the same or an alert signal if the tag identifiers are not the same. If the signal is provided, a passenger is permitted to exit the secured area with the checked baggage. However, if the alert signal is provided, the passenger is prevented from exiting the secured area with the baggage.

Abstract: Apparatus and method for enabling asynchronous, collision-free communication between ports on a local shared bus network which is efficient in the use of bus bandwidth and which, in one embodiment, provides a bounded, guaranteed time to transmission for each port.

Abstract: Composer method and apparatus are disclosed in which human readable representations of characters are typed on the first part of a page and are thereafter typed on a second part of the page in the machine readable form. Key stroke signals generated by the typewriter keyboard are stored in a memory prior to being applied to access corresponding type ball positioning signals within a table to print the characters using a conventional type ball on the first portion of the page. Thereafter, the conventional type ball is replaced by a special type ball and the key stroke signals stored in the memory are used to access corresponding ones of a different set of type ball positioning signals within a second memory to enable the special type ball to type optically readable binary coded representations of the characters on the second part of the page.

Abstract: An apparatus for sorting of equal length records with the sorting time maximally overlapped by the time taken for loading and unloading of records. The minimal structure consists of a decision mechanism linked to and associated with a network of ladder structures. The activity within the network is so synchronized that the sorting activity in most ladders occurs while some ladder within the network is still undergoing the loading of input data; and during the unloading phase, the individually sorted data from each ladder are merged concurrently to produce a sequence of sorted records. The overlap between sorting and loading varies from 0 for records requiring no loading/unloading, to 100% for multi-ladder networks with loading/unloading.A single ladder structure supporting a type of transposition sort is first described both in a full exchange scheme and a fast version. Then, the mechanism for loading/unloading equal length records to the single ladder is set forth.