A money-dispensing system is operative to dispense money in response to a bank-customer's magnetically-encoded credit card and keyed-entry of his personal-identification number only if this number accords with the customer's account number as read from an accounting record provided from the card. The record is printed out by a printing drum that is rotated in accordance with signals representing the account number read out from the card by a magnetic reading-head.

A spiral staircase designed to be located adjacent a wall. The staircase has a spiral section which is composed of a successive series of horizontal, progressively angularly displaced steps that extend radially outwardly equal distances from and are connected at their inner ends to a common central vertical axial support so that the spiral thereby formed is circular in plan, occupies a minimum of space and has no central inner void. In order that the entrance to and exit from the spiral staircas...

An improved circulating access memory is provided by connecting a desired number of sub-minor loops serially to each minor loop of a major-minor loop type bubble mass memory through a plurality of bubble switching circuits. Each of the bubble switching circuits comprises a bubble branching circuit adapted to transfer data between adjacent loops for swapping purposes and a bubble mixing circuit adapted to receive such transferred data. This organization is particularly useful in a high-speed auxi...

A random access memory system employing dynamic storage wherein each cell comprises a single active element. The memory employs MOS technology and is disposed on a silicon substrate. A plurality of sense amplifiers are disposed in a column substantially bisecting each row of memory cells in the memory array. A single input/output line communicates with all the cells. Two dummy cells are employed on each row line on opposite sides of the sense amplifiers. The value of the signal provided by the d...

An access mechanism for a vertical stack of magnetic disks including a mechanism carriage moveable back and forth horizontally by a prime mover, an access arm having a magnetic head adjacent its end and carried by a carriage moveable along slide shafts mounted in the mechanism carriage at an angle with respect to horizontal and a stop against which the access arm carriage moves whereby the access arm moves vertically along the periphery of the disk stack as the movement of the mechanism carriage...

An access door for a rectangular opening in the cylindrical wall of a cylinder comprising a curved rectangular plate of somewhat larger size than the opening in the cylinder, a gasket surrounding the side edges of the rectangular plate and providing a margin of gasket material along the side edge of the plate against the cylinder; the door also includes an arcuate, but somewhat resilient, locking band of substantially the same length as the rectangular plate; a short rod projects radially outwar...

The closure includes a rotatable cap locked onto the container by a resilient skirt. The arc of rotation is limited by an insert in the opening of the container. The insert also includes a funnel for directing the pills or other substance to be dispensed from the container and to a transfer chamber in the rotatable cap. The pill is moved from the transfer chamber to a holding chamber in the insert at an aligned location determined by the end limits of the arc of rotation. The dispensing orifice ...

A slewing access ramp for providing a passageway between a ship and a quay and pivotally connected to the ship so that it may be swung either upwards into an inoperative upstanding stowed position on board ship or downwards into an operative working position to bear onto the quay with its outboard end and comprising means for variable connection with said ship so that the ramp may swivel in parallel relation to a relatively horizontal plane about at least one substantially vertical geometrical a...

A memory cell comprising field-effect transistors for use in a random access memory array. The cell is of the dynamic type wherein data is stored on capacitive elements, and is self-refreshing; no circuitry external to the array is needed for refresh, other than clock sources. Four MOS field effect transistors are employed, with two non-overlapping clocks, a data buss for each row of the array and one address line for each column. One of the storage capacitances may be a voltage-dependent capaci...

A money-dispensing system is operative to dispense money to a bank customer in response to keyed-entry of his personal-identification number and account number in succession, using a set of ten push-buttons. The account number is printed out and as read from the hard-copy log is transmitted to a central processor to obtain read out of account information stored there. The stored account information includes a check number for comparison with the entered personal-identification number which is tr...