Electrophotographic copier with constant rate data compression and simultaneous storage and decompression of compressed data received on a mutually coupled data bus

Claim 1

An electrophotographic copying machine, comprising: image reading means for reading an original document and providing original image data; data compressing means for compressing the original image data to provide compressed image data, said data compressing means for applying a data compressing algorithm having a constant rate of compression; data storage means for storing the compressed image data; data decompressing means for decompressing the compressed image data to provide decompressed image data; data bus means, coupled to said data compressing means, said data storage means and said data decompressing means, for conducting the compressed image data from said data compressing means to said data storage means and to said data decompressing means; image output means for printing the decompressed image data; and control means for controlling the operation of said image reading means, data compressing means, data decompressing means, data storage means, and image output means, wherein said control means controls said data storage means to store the compressed image data and at substantially the same time controls said data decompressing means to decompress the compressed image data received on said data bus means to output the decompressed image data to said image output means such that the storage of the image data occurs substantially concurrently with the output of the decompressed image data.