Illumination arrangement for elimination of gray borders in copying device

An improved illumination and imaging system including an elongated lamp positioned adjacent a document support plane, said lamp adapted to provide an illumination band to a linearly extending incremental portion of the document to be copied,

• a linear image transmitter having an entrance and exit face positioned between said document support plane and a photosensitive imaging plane and along an optical path so that light reflected from said linearly extending incrementally illuminated document portion enters the entrance face of said transmitter and is transmitted therethrough onto the photosensitive surface of said imaging plane,
• means for moving said document with respect to said linear transmitter whereby an area of the imaging plane surface is exposed to form a latent image of said document, the side edges of said exposed image being bounded by an unexposed area,
• the improvement comprising a pair of reflective members connected, respectively to opposite ends of said linear image transmitter, and adapted to reflect a portion of said lamp illumination into the respective end portions of said entrance face,
• whereby said reflected portions are transmitted onto the unexposed side edges of said exposed image so as to discharge said unexposed areas.