Microfilm filing system
AssigneeBell & Howell Company
InventorDelmar R. Johnson
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A microfilm system stores document on film for compact and secure filing. Full-size paper copies may be made of any document in the file. A single, attractively styled, compact housing contains a preferably manually fed camera, with an electrophotographic 16 mm roll film packaged in a cassette for easy film loading and unloading. The film is processed immediately after each image is recorded so that it is ready for instant retrieval. A bar code is recorded adjacent each image, responsive to a keyboard operation. During retrieval, a high-speed film transport searches for a designated bar code. Once an image is found, it may be projected on either a screen or paper in a printing system.
Claims28
A microfilm document recording and retrieval system comprising means for microcopying on a web images of individual documents;
- means for simultaneously recording on said web an operator-assigned, document-identifying, machine-readable code adjacent each microcopied document;
- means for immediately processing the microcopied image so that it is available for retrieval;
- means for identifying to said system a preselected one of said machine readable codes;
- means for searching over said web for said preselected code;
- and means responsive to finding said preselected code for selectively projecting the image identified thereby onto either a screen or a printing mechanism.
A process for filing and retrieving documents, said process comprising the steps of:
- a. microcopying documents in a random order on a web of microimaging material;
- b. identifying each document recorded on said web by a manually-assigned, machine-readable file symbol which is formed on the web at the time when the microcopy is made;
- c. preselecting any one of said machine-readable file symbols;
- d. searching over said web for a document identified by said preselected file symbol;
- and
- e. selectively either displaying or printing said document identified by said file symbol.
A microimage file system in a unitary machine having an image copy area, a microweb exposure and processing area, and an image display and printing area, said copy area comprising means for illuminating documents to be copied, means for transmitting images of said lit documents from said copy area to said exposure and processing area, means for adding manually selected machine readable file identification codes adjacent said transmitted image in said exposure and processing area, means for simultaneously recording said transmitted image and said codes on a charge-sensitized medium in said exposure and processing area, means for processing said image and codes, means responsive to a selection of a machine-readable code for retrieving at least one of those recorded images which are identified by said selected code, and means responsive to retrieval of said images for projecting said retrieved images from said exposure and processing area to said display and printing area.
A process for filing and retrieving documents, said process comprising the steps of:
- a. assigning a block of image frames on a web of microimaging material;
- b. identifying each block by a manually-assigned, machine-readable file symbol;
- c. assigning related documents to the same machine-readable file symbol;
- d. microcopying related documents in the assigned block on the web having the same file symbol;
- e. preselecting any one of said machine-readable file symbols;
- f. searching over said web for said machine-readable file symbol;
- and
- g. selectively either displaying or printing said documents identified by said file symbol.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.