A railroad bed has an elastomeric mat which supports the ballast and on which the sleepers and rails are mounted. The mat has an upper surface formed by a metal or plastic sheet which prevents penetration of the ballast into the elastomeric body.

A method of identifying a plurality of different types of particles in the field of view is disclosed. A first parameter is measured for each of the plurality of different particles. One of the type of particles is identified based upon the first parameter measured. Once the one type of particle is identified, a second parameter, different from the first parameter, is then measured for the one type of particle. The other types of particles in the field of view can be identified based upon the se...

The disclosed cap has an elongated body with screw threads formed on one end, and an interior cavity extended axially away from the threads toward the other end. The cavity is defined in part by a generally transverse face disposed radially in from the threads and an elongated smaller closed end bore extended axially from the transverse face. The threads and face would be sized to correspond to the threads and transverse face on a packing nut used on an exterior water faucet, and the bore would ...

An image processing device for a negative microfilm reader for easily and precisely designating areas of black frames to be erased. In a microfilm reader having an image reader for reading enlarged projection images of a negative microfilm, an image processor for processing image signals, and a display means for displaying the processed images with black and white reversed, the device comprises area input means for inputting the areas of black frames in the images displayed on the display; and a...

A method for automatically locating and recognizing amount data on a document by scanning the document to first locate a particular symbol, such as a dollar sign "$", and then using the located "$" to determine the document area containing the amount data to be recognized. Elements of the "$" symbol and amount characters are extracted from a gray-level image using binary seed and mask images derived using different gray-level thresholds. Operation is such that black pixels found in the higher th...

A computer implemented gambling chip recognition system having the ability to capture an image of a stack of gambling chips and automatically processing the image to determine the number of chips within the stack and the value of each. The system processor determines the classification for each chip in a stack by way of processing performed in real time on the image of the stack of gambling chips. The system further includes the ability to communicate the information derived from the stack of ga...

A method for determining a set of surface locations lying along a predetermined line of survey beneath which there is a relatively high probability of existing subsurface mineral bodies exhibiting relatively high density and relatively low magnetic susceptibility by selecting for membership in said set those surface locations lying in regions where a local minimum of magnetic field intensity substantially correlates to a local maximum of gravitational field intensity, those surface locations lyi...

An electronic system for processing sampled data input signals includes an electronic memory which stores a set of preprocessed vectors V.sub.1 f(m, . . . ) thru V.sub.N *f(m, . . . ) where f(m, . . . ) is a sampled data function, having any number of dimensions m, . . . . * is a convolution operator, and V.sub.1 thru V.sub.N are a finite set of N unprocessed vectors each of which represents an anticipated group of input signal samples. After these preprocessed vectors are stored, input signals ...

This invention relates to a character segmentation method for use with an optical character reader for sequentially reading postal code, state name and city name postal information, and for generating signals which represent character masks of each character. The system then calculates the gap between each mask and determines if it is greater than an average gap value calculated for all the masks. A determination is also made if a substantially smaller mask (representing a punctuation mark) exis...

A bar code detector or acquisition arrangement for detecting the presence and location of a bar code pattern in a field of view. The bar code pattern detector is not designed to decode a bar code pattern, but merely to be sensitive to and detect the presence of a bar code pattern or patterns so that a conventional bar code scanner can then be activated to perform a decoding operation thereon. The present invention is based upon the generation of Moire patterns, and includes an electro-optic syst...