US 5657077

Patent Overview: US 5,657,077 A

Title: Event recording system with digital line camera

Patent number: US 5,657,077 A

Application number: US08/019,222

Inventors: Douglas J. DeAngelis; Kirk Sigel; Mike Ciholas

Original assignee: Individual. The record also shows an assignment to LYNX SYSTEM DEVELOPERS, INC. (assignors: Ciholas, DeAngelis, Sigel). Current assignee listed as Lynx System Developers Inc.

Key dates: Priority/filing date 1993-02-18; publication (grant) date 1997-08-12; anticipated expiration 2014-08-12. Legal status: Expired – Lifetime. A related priority to US08/265,063 (US5552824A) is noted for 1994-06-28.

Purpose (from the supplied text): The invention addresses monitoring and recording motion events — "the accurate management and control of time-sequential imaging and display" — and most particularly provides "a total race-management system" for timed sporting events. It notes limitations of analog video: information is a continuum over time, hard to apportion to a unique time interval, hard to access a particular moment, requiring medium searches, and allowing only one user access at a time.

Plain-language scope (from the supplied excerpt): In one aspect, the system records and displays a time-sequential scene of bodies moving across a plane in space. It includes at least one digital camera viewing and imaging a line object in the plane of interest; the camera time-sequentially captures that line object by imaging it onto an array of detector elements and converts the sampled signal into a digital image (frame) of the line object. Each digital image frame uniquely represents a slice of the moving scene at a moment in time. The system also includes an image timer with a timer processor that responds to a preselected digital value from the camera. Objects include improvements in managing/recording timed sporting events referencing bodies or entrants crossing a finish line relative to an external event start, and improved access, control, and storage of a scene comprising discrete time images.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5657077/en

What the excerpt does not establish: The excerpt is partial ("consult the source for omitted text") and contains no full claim set, no abstract, no complete description, and no prior-art reference citations. It therefore does not establish the precise claim scope or claim language, claim count, or the specific prior art relied upon. The listed classifications are present, but their completeness and correctness are not established here.