The development of the electrophotographic process technology in Japan over the last 50 years is mentioned, together with companies, the world situation, and the Society activity. In the early stage of electrophotographic technology in Japan, we learned from foreign technology, but we have improved quality, productivity and usability of copy machines/printers and developed the technology considering environmental preservation.
Now, the technologies that we have established, contributed to the electrophotographic products and the world business. Today, more difficult task how to overcome the ink-jet and conventional printing technology has been started, and the role of the Imaging Society of Japan is getting more important.

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The various kinds of the toners and the carrier had been developed to fulfill the requirements of the developing system and the print quality. And the many kinds of the materials, such as Charge Control Agents, had bee developed to stabilize the tribo electric charging of the toners. On the other hand, the study on the design of the molecular weight distribution of the polymers and on the releasing agents had enable to apply the heat roll fusing system. And the energy consumption of the electrophotography had been decreased by the application of the novel polyester resins. The full color toners had been already developed in 1970's and the print quality of the electrophotography had been dramatically improved day by day. The electrophotography had become to be able to apply to “Print On Demand" applications and the remarkable growth will be expected today.

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History of ink jet technology is recollected by summarizing researches leading invention of ink jet, research and development activities on ink jet and past products. Prospects on performance advances and application possibilities of ink jet are also described based on recent technology trends. Expected functions or performances when ink jet was born in the middle part of the 20-century seem to be mostly satisfied now. Low cost and small size color ink jet printer has become the exclusive province of personal market.
Many efforts on ink jet, which improve performances, have been attempted and new function as marking technology has been exploited at the present day. Ink jet application to fabrication process (Digital Fabrication), which never imagined at the invention of ink jet, has been also developed. These novel activities will face tough problems and need revolutionary approaches. A great innovation by ink jet will be expected when success is achieved.

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This paper looks down the history of thermal recording technology. Thermal recording system was devised more than 80 years ago and it still keeps activity now. Advantages of thermal recording system are simple, high reliability and low cost. These futures had been brought by the invention of “thermal head” in 1962.
There are many ways of image recording with thermal energy. And the multiplicity had been open to utilization in various ways. In addition continual studies of thermal recording could realize color recording and rewritable recording. Thermal recording technology has been penetrating silently without our knowing it.

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Since meeting 600 hundreds' anniversary of Gutenberg' s birth in 2000 A. D., advancing imaging technologies raised a curtain of new IT age. With the great progresses in Hi-Fi color imaging technologies and advent of novel devices such as thin FPD or electronic paper, there is no end to the eternal demands for aesthetic and realistic image reproduction. Digital Image Processing played an important role to support NIP or Information Display technologies and its intellectual growth will indispensable to the next generation color imaging. The collaboration with human vision software is a key to success towards the Intelligent and hopefully into the Intellectual Image Processing.
This paper looks back the historical advances in color image processing method and introduces its applications, mainly focusing on NIP area.

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Recently, electronic paper(e-paper)has received attention. “E-paper” is not a technology but “Concept”, therefore there are many kinds of technology that realizes e-paper. The seventh committee(e-paper committee)of the Imaging Society of Japan was organized at 1993 as the rewritable working group in the sixth committee and continues to be operating. The seventh committee has introduced the technology of e-paper by taking place the workshop of e-paper each year since 1993.
The e-paper has two types. One is “Inside drive type” and another is “Outside drive type”. Representative example of the outside drive types is a thermal rewritable recording that is widely used to a display of information on card. In the inside drive types, the technologies used powder, particle or liquid crystal are researched. The electronic book used the inside drive technology was purchased. The concept of e-paper is important for growth of market of e-paper. I hope that Japanese company or university proposes a new concept of e-paper.

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