Latent image projecting mirror surface body

Abstract: Provided is a magic mirror device comprising a substrate having a front surface which is mirror-finished while having slight recesses and a rear surface having no protrusion on which nicked marks are formed in stead of protrusions, wherein the thickness of the substrate is less than 10 mm while the depth of nicked marks are less than 20 µm, thereby it is possible to precisely read a latent image on the mirror-finished front surface thereof upon irradiation of light onto the front surface.

Description: The present invention relates to a latent image projecting mirror surface body and, more particularly, to a latent image projecting mirror surface body which can be utilised for recognition of secret codes or for ornamentation of gadgets or articles. There has conventionally been a classical magic mirror, formed as a mirror surface body similar to a latent image projecting mirror surface body. This magic mirror is based upon such a phenomenon that images which are deeply sculptured in its back surface so as to form protrusions give convexities and concavities on its front mirror surface when the same is polished, and that such images are visible on a screen in light reflection and projection. The principle of the abovementioned magic mirror will hereinafter be described with reference to the drawings. Fig. 1 schematically shows a mirror surface body 13. A light beam from a small light source 11 is projected through a pin hole 12 onto a polished front surface 131, of the mirror surface body. A shallow and wide recess 15 is automatically formed at the front surface of the mirror surface body, when a sculpture 132 is formed on the back surface thereof, after polishing the front surface. If there is no recess or protrusion or stain on the front surface, evenly distributed rays are reflected onto a screen 14 thereby forming a simple even-brightness image having a shape corresponding to the front surface 131. However, the shallow recess 15 existing on the surface 131 serves as a concave mirror which converges lights, and reflects rays as shown by the dotted lines 16. Therefore, the light image formed on the screen 14 has a non-uniform distribution of brightness as shown by a curve 17, that is, in general the light image on the screen 14 has a bright spot or bright region if the mirror face is concaved, and a dark spot or dark area when the mirror face is convexed. When the surface has parallel recess-shaped unevenness, the light image becomes a parallel shadow pattern, and accordingly one can detect a shallow recess of more than 0.3 µm depth on the surface of a mirror surface body having a thickness in the range of 1 to 3 mm. In the above conventional example, the mirror surface body 13 having its back surface formed therein with a protruded sculpture 132 is polished on its front surface 131 so as to have a mirror surface. Accordingly, much time and expenditure is necessary for the formation of the image sculpture and the mirrored surface. Meanwhile, various methods for readily observing the latent images in the front surface of the substrate are known and have hitherto been proposed (refer to for example Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model 57-134612, Japanese Laid-Open Patent 57-186106). In this case, however, nicked marks and the like are formed on the front surface of the substrate so that they are directly visible and accordingly, are not intended to be secret codes. In addition, because the marks and the like exist on the front surface, the aesthetics of the front surface are adversely affected. This imposes a limitation upon the use of the mirror surface bodies based on the above methods. The present invention has been made in view of the above-described conventional inconveniences, and accordingly an object of the present invention is to provide a mirror surface body and a mark discriminating method therefor such that the marks cannot be directly visible from the front surface and are only revealed from the back surface by irradiation of light on the front surface only. According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a latent image projecting mirror surface body formed of a substrate having a front and a back surface, characterised in that the thickness of said substrate is 5 mm or less, and said front surface thereof is firstly polished into a mirror surface, said front surface has formed thereon apparently invisible slight recesses which are caused by stress produced by nicks having a depth of at least 0.1 µm formed on said back surface of said substrate, whereby said apparently invisible recesses cast images of said nicks in a normal posture on a screen in reflection and projection of light incident upon said front mirror surface. Further, according to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a latent image projecting mirror surface body formed of a substrate having a front and a back surface, characterised in that the thickness of said substrate is 10 mm or less, and said front surface is firstly polished into a mirror surface, said front surface has formed thereon apparently slight recesses which are caused by stress produced by nicks formed on said back surface of said substrate and having a depth of 20 µm or more, whereby said recesses cast images of said nicks in a normal posture on a screen in reflection and projection of light incident upon said front mirror surface. Fig. 1 illustrates the principle of a magic mirror as hereinbefore described; and Fig. 2 illustrates the contents of the present invention. In the present invention, it is possible to easily form a mirror surface body having concave and convex surface portions by using a plate having a thickness of 5 mm or less, the mirror surface body having a front surface, which is polished into a mirror surface, and on a back surface formed with marks such as characters, pictures or the like to a depth of 0.1 µm or more. The concavities and convexities produce latent images which are not directly visible. It should be noted that such marks can readily be formed, for example, by use of an energy such as a laser of electron beam as well as by use of a cutter having a sharp blade. When the light is irradiated onto the front mirror surface body, despite the fact that nothing is apparently seen directly from said front surface, the corresponding latent images can be projected as normal images onto a screen so that the marks on the mirror surface body can be easily discriminated. Similar objectives can be realised by using a plate sheet having a thickness less than 10 mm and with its front surface polished into a mirror surface, and the back surface formed with marks such as characters or pictures to a depth of 20 µm or more. A specific embodiment of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to Fig. 2. First of all, glass plates 23 each having both surfaces thereof polished and each having a thickness in the range of 0.5 to 8 mm and being 50 mm square were prepared as specimens. One side surface of each specimen was carved using a diamond point or sapphire cutter so as to form nicks 25a. The depth of the nicks 25a ranged from 0.1 to 100 µm when measured by a surface roughness meter. The nicks 25a comprise the characters of the so-called latent images which are not directly visible from the front surface 231. Next, sun light or a light beam from a point light source 11 was projected through a pin hole 12 onto the surface 231 of the glass plates 23 and projected onto a screen 14 spaced a distance 0.3 to 1 m from the surface 231. In the case where the glass plate 23 had a thickness of 5 mm or less, the characters on the back surface of the glass plate 23 could be generally distinguished from the image projected onto the screen 14. However, in the case of the glass plate 23 having a thickness of 5 mm, the characters could be observed on the screen 14 only where the depth of the nicks 25a were approximately 3 µm or more. In the case of the glass plate 23 having a thickness of greater than 5 mm, the characters were illegible. In the case of the glass plate 23 having a thickness of 2 mm or more, even the nicks or characters having a small depth of 0.1 µm were clearly legible. Forming nicks in the back surface is beneficial since no protrusion therefore depends from the back surface. It is considered that the reason why the characters were observed as described is by virtue of the formation of non-visible fine concavities 25b in the front surface 231. That is, although not clearly analysed at present, it is considered that the nick marks 25a formed on the back surface of a substrate 23 produces stress which causes a strain on the front mirror-polished surface, thereby the strain yields the formation of concavities 251 and convexities 252 therein. Namely, these concavities 251 and convexities 252 are considered to cause the scattering of reflected light rays to thereby form images on a viewing screen. In addition, there is presented a correlation between the thickness of the glass plate 23 and the resolution of the images projected onto the screen 14 and it has been found that the smaller the thickness of the glass plate 23, the higher the resolution. In the present invention, on the screen 14 the image of characters which are formed on the back surface is observed in a normal posture. On the other hand, however, according to the above-described prior art, there is observed a so-called mirror image where right and left sides are reversed while the upper and lower sides remain unchanged. That is, according to the present invention, normal posture images, characters, etc. formed on the back surface of the specimen can be seen in the light projection. This enables simple marking. In other words, according to the present invention, should a symbol, for example, "b", be formed on the back surface of the glass plate 23 and the symbol be observed from the front surface 231, the symbol "d" laterally reversed from "b", would be observed from the front surface although it is, in fact, directly seen. When light is irradiated onto such front surface and the image is projected upon the screen 14, the normal symbol "b" is conveniently observed. On the other hand, should an image on the glass plate be taken up directly by use of, for example, an image pickup tube, the symbol "d" which is the lateral reversal of "b" would be observed on a television screen. In this case, it is necessary to electronically invert the image in advance. The mirror surface can be copied onto a plastic material. Next, stainless steel plates polished on one surface thereof and having a thickness of 0.05 to 8 mm and a size of 30 mm square were prepared and they were similarly carved with characters in their back surfaces. In the case where the thickness was 5 mm or less, the characters could be easily read in the light projection if the thus formed nicks had a depth of 30 µm up to which nicks can be cut by ordinary force. Further, when nicks having approximately a thickness of 30 to 100 µm were formed by application of a CO₂ laser, the characters in all specimens could be easily read. Each stainless steel plate was carved beforehand so as to have a slight convex surface as a whole and was formed with similar nicks. When sunlight was irradiated upon the front convex surface, the characters observed were greatly magnified. This has been impossible with conventional magic mirrors. Furthermore, specimens of marble having double-sided mirror surfaces were prepared. Their thickness ranged between 0.5 mm and 10 mm. Nicks having a depth of 20 to 100 µm were formed by use of electron beams. As for all the specimens, the characters carved in the back surfaces thereof were seen and read in the projected images. Similar nicked characters were also formed by a laser beam. In this case as well, the characters were easily seen and read in the light projection. Shells were polished to prepare plates of double-sided mirror surfaces and characters were carved thereon. When the light was projected, the characters could be readily read in the light projection. When the characters or the like, obtained by such projection of light, were taken up directly into an image pickup tube and decoded by an electronic computer or the like, they could be recognised. In this case, however, since the abovementioned lateral reversal occurs, the postures are required to be corrected by use of an optical system, electronic system or decoding software. It is to be noted that observation of the surfaces of such mirror surface bodies with the naked eyes resulted in observation of neither any mark nor any change thereon, that is an apparently smooth surface can be seen thus such characters could be useful as secret codes. In the abovementioned cases, description has been made, taking characters as an example. Needless to say, however, the same advantages would be obtained even if images or pictures were formed in place of characters. Further, since no nicks are recognised on the front mirror surface of the mirror surface body, it is, of course, possible to effectively utilise the mirror surface per se for various purposes. As has been described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to easily form latent images in the mirror surface by carving characters or the like on the back surface of the substrate and without deteriorating the aesthetics of the front mirror surface of the substrate, and to make such latent images visible on a screen or the like in the normal posture projected image by irradiation of light onto the mirror surface. Thus, it is possible to provide a novel mirror surface body which can widely be applied for ornamentation, recognition, etc. in which the formation of any nick in the front mirror surface is undesirable. In addition, it is also possible to easily form latent images in the front convex mirror surface, which can not be seen by the prior art methods, thereby it is possible to observe the latent images in the enlarged projected images.

Claims: A latent image projecting mirror surface body formed of a substrate having a front and a back surface, characterised in that the thickness of said substrate is 5 mm or less, and said front surface thereof is firstly polished into a mirror surface, said front surface has formed thereon apparently invisible slight recesses which are caused by stress produced by nicks having a depth of at least 0.1 µm formed on said back surface of said substrate, whereby said apparently invisible recesses cast images of said nicks in a normal posture on a screen in reflection and projection of light incident upon said front mirror surface. A latent image projecting mirror surface body as set forth in claim 1, characterised in that said front mirror surface is convex. A latent image projecting mirror surface body as set forth in claim 1, characterised in that said nicks are formed by application of an energy beam. A latent image projecting mirror surface body as set forth in claim 1, wherein said nicks are carved by a cutter blade. A latent image projecting mirror surface body formed of a substrate having a front and a back surface, characterised in that the thickness of said substrate is 10 mm or less, and said front surface is firstly polished into a mirror surface, said front surface has formed thereon apparently slight recesses which are caused by stress produced by nicks formed on said back surface of said substrate and having a depth of 20 µm or more, whereby said recesses cast images of said nicks in a normal posture on a screen in reflection and projection of light incident upon said front mirror surface. A latent image projecting mirror surface body as set forth in claim 5, characterised in that said front mirror surface is convex. A latent image projecting mirror surface body as set forth in claim 5, characterised in that said nicks are formed by an energy beam. A latent image projecting mirror surface body as set forth in claim 5, characterised in that said nicks are carved by a cutter blade.

Inventors: KUGIMIYA KOICHI, KUGIMIYA, KOICHI
Applicants: MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC IND CO LTD, MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CO., LTD.
Application year: 1989
Main classification: B44F1
IPC codes: G09F19, G02B5, B44F1, A47G1