In a document insertion machine, third-party advertising documents are fed from downstream insert stations (36, 37, 38, 39). The third party insert stations include an optional insert station (39) from which documents are to be fed only if the additional weight occasioned by the feeding does not cause an increase in the postage for a customer's stuffed envelope. The other third party insert stations (36, 37, 38) are chargeback stations which feed documents regardless of the impact of feeding upo...

A crossbar switch is constructed in monolithic integrated circuit form together with respective memory cells controlling each of the component crosspoint switches in the crossbar switch. The memory cells permit control signals for the crosspoint switches to be supplied serially to the monolithic integrated circuit and thus permit those control signals to be supplied in coded form as orthogonal cross addressing for the memory cells. This reduces the number of bits which must be provided in parall...

A flueric amplifier with two control ports for each control channel. Each control channel is split to operate both ports. The control flow is split and applied to the power jet through the two separate control ports. This separate application is called distributed control and results in greater flow recovery and pressure recovery as well as improved switching time. One of the control ports comprises an entrainment control port for introducing positive pressure control fluid to the attachment bub...

The invention relates to a compact tunable subsea seismic source. The source has multiple seismic radiating plates placed symmetrically about a central housing which contains a hydraulic actuating system. The source is towed to optimize the amount of energy applied to the surrounding water.

An array testing apparatus includes a plurality of pin pattern generators for individually generating serial bit sequences required at each pin of a device under test during the testing operation. The individual pin pattern generators receive starting addresses from one or more programmable controllers and each pin pattern generator then performs a subroutine to repeat basic patterns or combinations of basic patterns as necessary. Both the pin pattern generators and the programmable controllers ...

In the particular embodiments described in the specification, an inverter connected to a DC source and a load includes two or more inverter units operating on a phase basis, and three connecting wires, consisting of two wires connecting each inverter unit and the power source and one wire connecting each inverter unit and the load, are arranged close to one another or twisted together. With this arrangement the distributed inductance is reduced not only for the wires connecting the DC source and...

A distributed packet switching system in which a centralized switch is not used and, instead, each transmitting port contains the intelligence required to derive and then insert the destination port and station addresses into the header of each packet to be transmitted by the port. The port circuitry that derives the destination addresses operates under control of a central controller which, prior to the setup of each call, receives information identifying the transmitting port and calling stati...

A method of arbitrating for N processors requesting access to a shared resource utilizing 2 log.sub.2 N shared variables, such as electrical lines. Each processor can assert a line which is asserted if any processor is asserting it. A requesting processor asserts one of two lines for each bit of a unique processor address, the choice of line depending on the value of the bit. The processor then examines the non-asserted line to determine if it is asserted by another processor. If the other line ...

A distributed feedback semiconductor laser which has periodic corrugations formed in a layer adjoining a light emitting layer so as to extend in the direction of travel of light and performs laser oscillation by the injection of current into the light emitting layer, in which a part of at least one metal electrode has a TM mode suppressing region disposed at a position where light is essentially distributed in the thickwise direction of the laser. A window region formed of a semiconductor larger...

An arrangement for digital multiplexing onto a common highway a plurality of analogue input signals which are physically spaced apart over a distance. m time division multiplexing units 5a each have for each of n separate analogue signals n single channel pulse coding means 6 the outputs of which are time division multiplexed at a common outlet 12. Each multiplexing unit 5a also has a timing circuit 7 which can be either free running or locked to the similar timing circuit of a succeeding unit (...