HISTORY OF PRINTER

HISTORY OF PRINTER

Printer (computing) History

The history of printers is a fascinating journey that spans centuries of technological advancements. Here is a brief overview of the key milestones in printer history:

 

1. Early Mechanical Printing (15th Century): The earliest form of printing can be traced back to ancient China, where woodblock printing was used as early as the 9th century. However, Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the movable-type printing press around 1440 in Germany marked a significant turning point in printing history. Gutenberg's press allowed for the mass production of books and documents, revolutionizing the dissemination of information and knowledge.
2. Impact Printers (19th Century): In the 19th century, impact printers became popular, utilizing mechanical hammers or pins to create impressions on paper. The most well-known example is the typewriter, patented by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1868. Typewriters allowed people to produce written documents with greater speed and efficiency.
3. Electromechanical Printers (20th Century): The early 20th century saw the development of more sophisticated printers with electrical components. The Teletype machine, invented in the late 1800s but popularized in the early 1900s, used a combination of mechanical and electrical processes to transmit and print telegraph messages.
4. Dot Matrix Printers (1960s): Dot matrix printers, introduced in the 1960s, were the first computer printers to gain widespread popularity. They used a grid of pins to strike an ink ribbon, creating characters and images on paper. Dot matrix printers were relatively noisy and produced low-quality output, but they were durable and found extensive use in businesses and homes for several decades.
5. Laser Printers (1970s): The development of laser printers in the 1970s was a significant leap forward in printing technology. The Xerox Corporation is credited with introducing the first commercial laser printer, the Xerox 9700, in 1977. Laser printers use laser beams to create static electricity on a rotating drum, attracting toner particles and transferring them to paper to form high-quality text and images. Laser printing quickly became the standard for producing professional-looking documents.
6. Inkjet Printers (1980s): Inkjet printing technology emerged in the 1980s and offered an alternative to laser printing. Inkjet printers use tiny droplets of ink sprayed onto paper to create images and text. The first consumer inkjet printer, the Hewlett-Packard DeskJet, was introduced in 1988, making color printing more accessible to home users.
7. Digital Printing (1990s): With the advent of digital technology, printing underwent another revolution. Digital printers, including digital color printers and digital offset presses, brought significant improvements in print quality and efficiency. Digital printing allowed for on-demand printing, customization, and variable data printing.
8. 3D Printing (2000s): 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is a relatively recent innovation that gained traction in the 2000s. 3D printers create three-dimensional objects by adding material layer by layer based on digital designs. This technology has diverse applications in various industries, from prototyping and manufacturing to healthcare and aerospace.

Throughout history, printers have continuously evolved to meet the growing needs of businesses, individuals, and industries. They remain an integral part of modern life, facilitating communication, documentation, and creativity in a wide range of fields.

 

HP LaserJet 5 printer

 

 The Game Boy Pocket Printer, a thermal printer released as a peripheral for the Nintendo Game Boy

 

This is an example of a wide-carriage dot matrix printer, designed for 14-inch (360 mm) wide paper, shown with 8.5-by-14-inch (220 mm × 360 mm) legal paper. Wide carriage printers were often used in the field of businesses, to print accounting records on 11-by-14-inch (280 mm × 360 mm) tractor-feed paper. They were also called "132-column printers". A video showing an inkjet printer while printing a page.

In computing, a printer is a peripheral machine that makes a persistent representation of graphics or text, usually on paper. While most output is human-readable, barcode printers are an example of an expanded use for printers. Different types of printers include 3D printers, inkjet printers, laser printers, and thermal printers.

History

The first computer printer designed was a mechanically driven apparatus by Charles Babbage for his different engines in the 19th century; however, his mechanical printer design was not built until 2000.

The first patented printing mechanism for applying a marking medium to a recording medium or more particularly an electrostatic inking apparatus and a method for electrostatically depositing ink on controlled areas of a receiving medium, was in 1962 by C. R. Winston, Teletype Corporation, using continuous inkjet printing. The ink was a red stamp-pad ink manufactured by Phillips Process Company of Rochester, NY under the name Clear Print. This patent (US3060429) led to the Teletype Inktronic Printer product being delivered to customers in late 1966.

The first compact, lightweight digital printer was the EP-101, invented by the Japanese company Epson and released in 1968, according to Epson.

The first commercial printers generally used mechanisms from electric typewriters and Teletype machines. The demand for higher speed led to the development of new systems specifically for computer use. In the 1980s there were daisy wheel systems similar to typewriters, line printers that produced similar output but at much higher speed, and dot-matrix systems that could mix text and graphics but produced relatively low-quality output. The plotter was used for those requiring high-quality line art like blueprints.

The introduction of the low-cost laser printer in 1984, with the first HP LaserJet, and the addition of PostScript in next year's Apple LaserWriter set off a revolution in printing known as desktop publishing. Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, but at quality levels formerly available only from commercial typesetting systems. By 1990, most simple printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser printed; expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet of 1988 offered the same advantages as a laser printer in terms of flexibility but produced somewhat lower-quality output (depending on the paper) from much less expensive mechanisms. Inkjet systems rapidly displaced dot-matrix and daisy-wheel printers from the market. By the 2000s, high-quality printers of this sort had fallen under the $100 price point and became commonplace.

The rapid improvement of internet email through the 1990s and into the 2000s has largely displaced the need for printing as a means of moving documents, and a wide variety of reliable storage systems means that a "physical backup" is of little benefit today.

Starting around 2010, 3D printing became an area of intense interest, allowing the creation of physical objects with the same sort of effort as an early laser printer required to produce a brochure. As of the 2020s, 3D printing has become a widespread hobby due to the abundance of cheap 3D printer kits, with the most common process being Fused deposition modeling.

Types

Personal printers are mainly designed to support individual users and may be connected to only a single computer. These printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs, requiring minimal setup time to produce a hard copy of a given document. However, they are generally slow devices ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per minute (ppm), and the cost per page is relatively high. However, this is offset by the on-demand convenience. Some printers can print documents stored on memory cards or from digital cameras and scanners.

Networked or shared printers are "designed for high-volume, high-speed printing". They are usually shared by many users on a network and can print at speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm. The Xerox 9700 could achieve 120 ppm.

 

A virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of a printer driver, but which is not connected to a physical computer printer. A virtual printer can be used to create a file which is an image of the data which would be printed, for archival purposes or as input to another program, for example, to create a PDF or to transmit to another system or user.

A barcode printer is a computer peripheral for printing barcode labels or tags that can be attached to, or printed directly on physical objects. Barcode printers are commonly used to label cartons before shipment or to label retail items with UPCs or EANs.

A 3D printer is a device for making a three-dimensional object from a 3D model or other electronic data source through additive processes in which successive layers of material (including plastics, metals, food, cement, wood, and other materials) are laid down under computer control. It is called a printer by analogy with an inkjet printer which produces a two-dimensional document by a similar process of depositing a layer of ink on paper.

 

ID Card printers

 

A card printer is an electronic desktop printer with single card feeders which print and personalize plastic cards. In this respect they differ from, for example, label printers which have a continuous supply feed. Card dimensions are usually 85.60 × 53.98 mm, standardized under ISO/IEC 7810 as ID-1. This format is also used in EC cards, telephone cards, credit cards, driver's licenses, and health insurance cards. This is commonly known as the bank card format. Card printers are controlled by corresponding printer drivers or by means of a specific programming language. Generally, card printers are designed with laminating, striping, and punching functions, and use desktop or web-based software. The hardware features of a card printer differentiate a card printer from the more traditional printers, as ID cards are usually made of PVC plastic and require laminating and punching. Different card printers can accept different card thicknesses and dimensions.

The principle is the same for practically all card printers: the plastic card is passed through a thermal print head at the same time as a color ribbon. The color from the ribbon is transferred onto the card through the heat given out from the print head. The standard performance for card printing is 300 dpi (300 dots per inch, equivalent to 11.8 dots per mm). There are different printing processes, which vary in their detail:

 

Thermal transfer

Mainly used to personalize pre-printed plastic cards in monochrome. The color is "transferred" from the (monochrome) color ribbon onto the card.

 

Dye sublimation

This process uses four panels of color according to the CMYK color ribbon. The card to be printed passes under the print head several times each time with the corresponding ribbon panel. Each color in turn is diffused (sublimated) directly onto the card. Thus it is possible to produce a high depth of color (up to 16 million shades) on the card. Afterward, a transparent overlay (O) also known as a topcoat (T) is placed over the card to protect it from mechanical wear and tear and to render the printed image UV resistant.

 

Reverse image technology

The standard for high-security card applications that use contact and contactless smart chip cards. The technology prints images onto the underside of a special film that fuses to the surface of a card through heat and pressure. Since this process transfers dyes and resins directly onto a smooth, flexible film, the print head never comes in contact with the card surface itself. As such, card surface interruptions such as smart chips, ridges caused by internal RFID antennae, and debris do not affect print quality. Even printing over the edge is possible.

 

Thermal rewrite print process

In contrast to the majority of other card printers, in the thermal rewrite process, the card is not personalized through the use of a color ribbon, but by activating a thermal-sensitive foil within the card itself. These cards can be repeatedly personalized, erased, and rewritten. The most frequent use of these is in chip-based student identity cards, whose validity changes every semester.

Common printing problems: Many printing problems are caused by physical defects in the card material itself, such as deformation or warping of the card that is fed into the machine in the first place. Printing irregularities can also result from chip or antenna embedding that alters the thickness of the plastic and interferes with the printer's effectiveness. Other issues are often caused by operator errors, such as users attempting to feed non-compatible cards into the card printer, while other printing defects may result from environmental abnormalities such as dirt or contaminants on the card or in the printer. Reverse transfer printers are less vulnerable to common printing problems than direct-to-card printers since with these printers the card does not come into direct contact with the printhead.

Variations in card printers:

Broadly speaking there are three main types of card printers, differing mainly by the method used to print onto the card. They are:

Near to Edge. This term designates the cheapest type of printing by card printers. These printers print up to 5 mm from the edge of the card stock.

Direct to Card, also known as "Edge to Edge Printing". The print head comes in direct contact with the card. This printing type is the most popular nowadays, mostly due to cost factors. The majority of identification card printers today are of this type.

Reverse Transfer, also known as "High Definition Printing" or "Over Edge Printing". The printhead prints to a transfer film backward (hence the reverse) and then the printed film is rolled onto the card with intense heat (hence the transfer). The term "over the edge" is due to the fact that when the printer prints onto the film it has a "bleed", and when rolled onto the card the bleed extends completely over the edge of the card, leaving no border.

 

Different ID Card Printers use different encoding techniques to facilitate disparate business environments and to support security initiatives. Known encoding techniques are:

Contact Smart Card – The Contact Smart Cards use RFID technology and require direct contact to a conductive plate to register admission or transfer information. The transmission of commands, data, and card status is held between the two physical contact points.

Contactless Smart Card – Contactless Smart Cards exhibit integrated circuits that can store and process data while communicating with the terminal via Radio Frequency. Unlike Contact Smart Card, contactless cards feature intelligent re-writable microchips that can be transcribed through radio waves.

HiD Proximity – HID's proximity technology allows fast, accurate reading while offering card or key tag read ranges from 4” to 24” inches (10 cm to 60.96 cm), dependent on the type of proximity reader being used. Since these cards and key tags do not require physical contact with the reader, they are virtually maintenance and wear-free.

ISO Magnetic Stripe - A magnetic stripe card is a type of card capable of storing data by modifying the magnetism of tiny iron-based magnetic particles on a band of magnetic material on the card. The magnetic stripe, sometimes called swipe card or magstripe, is read by physical contact and swiping past a magnetic reading head.