An audiographics conferencing arrangement for use in a business communication system allows the conferees to exchange displayed text and/or graphics stored locally in their respective data terminals. The conferees may change the displayed text and/or graphics and such changes are automatically distributed to the other data terminals so that all of the conferees view the same information. Moreover, a data terminal and its associated telephone station set may be included in an audiographics confer...

In a packet network, each data packet that is transported through the network to a destination node is assigned one of 2**N priority levels based on the type of information contained in the data packet. A data packet containing system control information is assigned the highest priority level. A data packet containing, for example, user information, is assigned a lower priority level. In addition, each priority level is associated with a respective "watermark" threshold. When a data packet arriv...

A digital signal processor is provided with the facility to range and converge on each of a plurality of echoes occurring at respective locations along a communications line. Specifically, the digital signal processor is arranged to adaptively process samples of a signal that has been transmitted to the communications line correlated with samples of a signal that have been received from the communications line. In the processing of the samples, the digital signal processor separates and measures...

A dispenser is disclosed for storing and rapidly dispensing measured quantites of powdered or granulated material. The dispenser has a nonmoving measuring chamber having top and bottom sides which are alternately opened and closed upon activation of the dispenser to fill the measuring chamber from a storage chamber and then discharge the measured quantity of material in the measuring chamber into a receiving receptacle.

The conversion of a drawing instruction into respective pixmap locations resident in main memory is typically performed by a host processor when an associated graphics processor cannot access the main memory. Such conversion is enhanced by employing a common pixmap accessible to the graphics processor, and arranging the host processor so that it changes a drawing instruction which references a respective pixmap into one which references the common pixmap. The changed drawing instruction is then ...

An optical amplifier is adapted to cancel the Raman gain of an optical transmission path that degrades those optical signals occupying the low end of the bandwidth such that the power is transferred from the latter signals to the optical signals occupying the high end of the bandwidth. More specifically, the optical amplifier adjusts the gain that it applies to the optical signals so that it favors the signal components at the low end of the bandwidth.

A stored directory is searched from a display station set to obtain the telephone number of a sought-after name. The arrangement uses the station set keypad to generate signals corresponding to the spelling of the sought-after name. The arrangement adds each entry it receives to previously formed sequence of entries and, for each newly formed sequence, returns to the station set the name and telephone number contained in a directory record having a string of characters that compare to the newly ...

A transient power alarm is often the result of a traffic overload placed on a communication system circuit carrier circuit. The disclosed power control arrangement recognizes such transient power alarms and outputs a special message to alert the system user to the possibility that traffic grading across carrier is unbalanced. The control arrangement also monitors the time that the system is powered solely by reserve battery and sheds its traffic load if the time that the system is operating sole...

To prevent particular transmission equipment from artificially increasing low level audio signals to a predetermined allowable level, such signals are first summed with a stabilization signal having a predetermined frequency to form a composite audio signal. Moreover, the stabilization signal has a level that prevents any increase in signal level that may be artificially imposed on the composite signal during the processing of the composite signal by the transmission equipment. Once the composit...

The processing of a telephone call identified in part by an area code associated with a particular geographical area results in forwarding the call to telephone equipment located in the geographical area. Such processing is enhanced by associating a unique area code with an entity other than a geographical region or telephone service and then forwarding a telephone call identified in part by the unique area code to telephone equipment associated with the entity even though that equipment may be ...