Abstract: An improved optical scanner including a semiconductor charge coupled shift register. The device is formed in a semiconductor substrate of a selected conductivity type (p or n). The substrate contains pockets of the opposite conductivity type (n or p), the pockets alternating between plus and minus. When the substrate and the pockets are biased to opposite electrical potentials, excess minority charges (caused by concentrated high intensity light) will be directed into the substrate to prevent "blooming".

Abstract: A system for detecting and analyzing the color of light impinging on a solid state imaging device or scanner. The scanner is composed of a triplet array of semiconductor photoelements with each photoelement in the array biased to act as a unique detector of a selected set of primary colors. Each photoelement is coupled to an photocurrent analyzing system which comprises a detection amplifier coupled to a trio of scaling amplifiers each of which in turn is coupled to a respective one of a trio of adder circuits. The output of each of these adder circuits is a signal indicative of the magnitude of a respective primary color impinging on the triplet array of photoelements.