An electronic printing system for printing bound documents such as books in which the pages of the document are placed face down in registered position on the platen of a scanner programmed to scan either or both sides of the page and provide image signals representative of the image scanned, and a printer programmable to either print both sides of a page on a common print media sheet or on separate print media sheets.

A bound document is made by placing one or more sheets of paper to be bound inside a binder having a hot-melt adhesive and then exposing the binder to microwave energy for a sufficient period of time to cause the hot-melt adhesive to melt bond onto an edge of the sheets of paper. In one embodiment of the invention, the hot-melt adhesive is microwave activatable. In another embodiment of the invention, the hot-melt adhesive is not necessarily microwave activatable and the binder includes a strip ...

A software package is described which resides in a color printing system and which automatically intercepts and colorizes black and white documents (or re-colors color documents, if desired) that are sent to the color printer. The description includes pictorial flow charts and segments of code from an existing implementation in a Pascal-like language, implemented for documents expressed in a high-level page description language (PDL). The functionality of each major process in the software is ex...

A document retainer (10) having receptacles (14) is provided. The retainer is equipped with clip switch contact sensors (46,50) in the retainer receptacles. Documents (12) held in the receptacles maintain the clip switch contact faces in a spaced relationship by being interposed therebetween. When a document is withdrawn, the contact faces spring into engagement, closing the contacts and thereby energizing an alarm circuit that has audible and inaudible alarms (20,18) to facilitate indication of...

A reader for reading light reflected from or transmitted through an original document includes an adjustment apparatus for detecting the white level of an analog signal from the original document. The detection is performed before reading of the original document. The detection level is compared to a reference white level. In response to the comparison either clock signals to an image sensor or a lighting signals to a light source are varied so that any analog signal from a read document has the...

An envelope includes a face and a base having a side edge integrally formed together and having a bottom edge welded together. A slot is formed in an upper edge portion of the face. A flap is integrally formed on an upper edge portion of the base and an ear is formed in the flap. The ear is insertable through the slot of the face when the flap is folded and superposed upon the face so that the upper edge portions of the face and of the base can be clamped together and so that papers disposed wit...

Device for printing endorsements on documents passing through a document processing apparatus. The device comprises a rotatable outer housing having a cylindrically shaped exterior surface and a ring gear having a toothed first part and a toothless second part. A stamp for printing endorsements and at least one band having digits or characters thereon form a substantially continuos surface with the exterior surface of the outer housing. When the endorsing device is rotated by a pinion meshing wi...

An apparatus for buffering transport of freshly inked documents is comprised of an upper deck oriented at an acute angle with respect to a horizontal plane. The apparatus has a plurality of opposite, parallel, threaded screw conveyers orthogonal to the upper deck. Inked documents travel upon the threads of the screw conveyers. A lower deck is provided for receiving inked documents. An eject pin mechanism causes the inked documents to be delivered from the apparatus.

A method and apparatus for identifying documents and classes of documents. The documents are provided with distinctive logotypes which are preferably at the top of each document. The coding of the logotypes is by the use of distinctive angular alignments in the logotype. The logotype is scanned at different angles in order to determine angular "signatures" for comparison with a predetermined power distribution.

Groups of differently printed advertising inserts are collated into stacks of at least two inserts each, and the stacks are advanced along a main predetermined path for feeding to a host machine having continuously moving pockets which contain newspaper jackets and which receive the collated stacks of inserts in order to marry the inserts and the jackets. Initially, at least two relatively tall stacked bundles of inserts are located above and are spaced laterally from the main path. Inserts are ...