JPS6215147B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a day-of-the-week display device for a digital clock that uses liquid crystal for display.

[Conventional technology]

Conventional day-of-the-week display devices for digital watches have two methods: first, the day of the week is printed on a cutout plate, and one of the positions corresponding to that day is illuminated with an electrode pattern on a liquid crystal cell, and the second method is to indicate the day of the week. The third method is to print the days of the week on the liquid crystal cell and surround one of them with the liquid crystal cell's electrode pattern, etc., and to print the days of the week on the liquid crystal cell, and for only one of the seven days of the week, surround one of the days with the electrode pattern of the liquid crystal cell. A method was used in which the electrode pattern was made to appear as a lighted light, and on the other six days of the week, the electrode pattern was hidden as a lighted state.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

The third conventional day of the week display device will be described with reference to FIG.

In Figures 1 and 2, 1 is the upper glass of the liquid crystal cell, 2 is the lower glass, and the liquid crystal material is the upper glass 1.
There is a sandwich between the bottom glass and the second glass.

3 is an upper polarizing plate, and 4 is a lower polarizing plate. The area within the two-dot chain line in FIG. 1 is the visible range of the liquid crystal cell 1 when it is placed in the exterior case. Further, a horizontal bar 5 dividing the upper and lower portions of the liquid crystal cell 1 and letters 6 (three letters) for the day of the week are printed on the lower polarizing plate 4 or the upper polarizing plate 3. Currently, the pattern on the liquid crystal cell shows 12:38:56, the date is the 26th, and the day of the week is Friday. The biggest problem with this conventional day of the week display device is the routing of each segment pattern formed in the cell to the external electrode. Generally, the external electrodes are provided at external connection electrode portions 1a and 1b of the upper glass 1 in FIG. This case has the disadvantage that the distance a between the time display segment pattern and the day of the week display pattern cannot be large. In other words, this type of day-of-the-week display device originally requires a considerable area of the liquid crystal cell pattern to hide the day of the week, so the distance a is inevitably small, and external connections from the display electrode pattern within the distance a. Design restrictions have been met that require the electrode width of wiring electrode patterns (not shown) to be routed to the wiring electrode portions 1a and 1b to be extremely thin or to reduce the number of electrode patterns. Furthermore, in order to avoid this, the electrode patterns for displaying the hours, minutes, seconds, and day of the day must be made smaller, making it difficult to read the time. In addition, as watches with various functions such as alarm function, stopwatch function, world clock function, and calculation function have appeared,
As the number of display elements increases, the above-mentioned routing relationship becomes more and more severe, and this becomes an even more important problem.

〔the purpose〕

An object of the present invention is to provide a day of the week digital clock that eliminates the above-mentioned drawbacks and allows easy wiring of lead lines from the time display segment pattern formed on the liquid crystal cell to the external electrodes without reducing the size of the day of the week characters. The purpose of this invention is to provide a display device.

[Configuration and operation of the present invention]

The present invention will be explained in detail below based on the drawings.
FIG. 3 is a plan view of a liquid crystal cell showing the day of the week display device of the present invention.

In order to simplify the drawing, parts not directly related to the present invention are omitted, and the liquid crystal cell is shown in a display state in which a voltage is applied to a predetermined electrode. In FIG. 3, a horizontal bar 5 and each day of the week 6 printed with three characters have the same structure as the conventional one. The day of the week is displayed by displaying only one of the three letters and hiding the remaining two letters with an electrode pattern.
The current time on the liquid crystal cell is 12:38:56, the date is the 26th, and the day of the week is Friday. When this method is adopted, the distance b between the electrode segment pattern indicating the time and the electrode pattern indicating the day of the week can be made larger than in the conventional example, and the route lines of the segment pattern of the liquid crystal cell to the external electrodes can be routed between this distance b. It has the advantage of being able to pass through. Of course, it is also possible to hide one letter of the three letters of the day of the week and leave the two letters always visible. Alternatively, the day of the week printing characters may be made up of three kanji characters (Monday to Tuesday, . . . ) and two of them may be hidden. That is, in the day of the week display device of the present invention, the number of characters for the 1st day of the week in the display of the 7 days of the week printed on the upper polarizing plate, lower polarizing plate, light guide plate, reflection plate, etc. of the liquid crystal cell is N, and the number of characters for the 1st day of the week is N. The day pattern of the liquid crystal cell is turned on for up to 1 out of (N-1) of the 6 days of the week, and for the remaining 1 day of the week, the day pattern of the liquid crystal cell is turned off with N day of the week letters. It is made visible by doing this.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As detailed above, if the day of the week device of the present invention is adopted, wiring from the time display segment pattern formed on the liquid crystal cell to the external electrodes can be easily routed, and at the same time, at least one character for each of the seven days of the week can be displayed at any time. Since the user can always read the day of the week, the arrangement of at least one character before and after the user serves as a type of guide character, making it very easy to read the day of the week, and has a great practical effect. .

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a plan view illustrating a conventional day of the week display device, FIG. 2 is a sectional view, and FIG. 3 is a plan view illustrating a day of the week display device of the present invention. 3... Upper polarizing plate, 4... Lower polarizing plate, 6... Day of the week display characters.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Print and form the characters of the 7th day of the week on the upper or lower polarizing plate of the liquid crystal cell, and set the number of characters of the 1st day of the week to N in the display of the 7 days of the week, and write the day of the week on the liquid crystal cell corresponding to the character of each day of the week. A pattern is provided, and for the 1st day of the week to be displayed, the pattern of the liquid crystal cell at the N day of the week character position is turned off to make N characters visible, and the number of characters for the 6th day of the week other than the day to be displayed is Day of the week display of a digital clock characterized by having a day of the week display drive circuit that lights up the day pattern of liquid crystal cells at positions from (N-1) to 1 to make (N-1) characters difficult to see. Device.