PURPOSE: To record satisfactorily the information without contact and without producing noise by performing the charging from the side of a photoconductive material of a recording medium produced by the photoconductive material as well as an electrode on a substrate and at the same time irradiating alight beam to the recording medium.

CONSTITUTION: The corona charge of positive polarity, for example, is put on a hydrogenated amorphous silicon film 14 by a DC corona charger 16. In this case, an electrode 13 is grounded via a rotary shaft 15 and therefore a DC electric field is applied to the film 14. While a laser beam 15 is irradiated from the side of a glass substrate 12 of a recording medium 11 in accordance with a prescribed information signal. In this case, the surface potential of the film 14 is high and set at several hundred volts and the DC corona current is set at about several hundred μA. Therefore a large current flows to the film 14 at the area where no beam 25 is irradiated by the dielectric breakdown to form a spot 26 at all. Furthermore the high resistance is secured to the mechanical vibrations, etc. since the corona charging is performed without contact.