Output device

An output device is any piece of computer hardware equipment used to communicate the
results of data processing carried out by an information processing system (such as
acomputer) which converts the electronically generated information into human-readable
form. An output device is any peripheral that receives data from a

computer, usually for display, projection, or physical reproduction.

For example, the image shows an inkjet printer, an output device
that can make a hard copyof any information shown on your
monitor. Below is a listing of all the different output devices used
with a computer. An output device is any device used to send data from a computer
to another device or user. Most computer data output that is meant for humans is in the
form of audio or video. Thus, most output devices used by humans are in these categories.
Examples include monitors, projectors, speakers, headphones and printers. An output
device refers to user-computer communication devices and devices used for
communication between computers, devices and other peripherals, which may be used for
input/output (I/O) purposes, like network interface cards (NIC), modems, IR ports, RFID
systems and wireless networking devices, as well as mechanical output devices, like
solenoids, motors and other electromechanical devices.

monitor
A monitor or a display is an electronic visual display for computers. The monitor comprises
the display device, circuitry and an enclosure. The display device in modern monitors is
typically a thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) thin panel, while older
monitors used a cathode ray tube (CRT) about as deep as the screen size.
Originally, computer monitors were used for data processing while television receivers were
used for entertainment. From the 1980s onwards, computers (and their monitors) have
been used for both data processing and entertainment, while televisions have implemented
some computer functionality. The common aspect ratio of televisions, and then computer
monitors, has also changed from 4:3 to 16:9.
History Early electronic computers were fitted with a panel of light bulbs where the state of
each particular bulb would indicate the on/off state of a particular register bit inside the
computer. This allowed the engineers operating the computer to monitor the internal state of
the machine, so this panel of lights came to be known as the 'monitor'. As early monitors
were only capable of displaying a very limited amount of information, and were very
transient, they were rarely considered for programme output. Instead, a line printer was the

primary output device, while the monitor was limited to keeping track of the programme's
operation.
As technology developed it was realized that the output of a CRT display was more flexible
than a panel of light bulbs and eventually, by giving control of what was displayed to the
programme itself, the monitor itself became a powerful output device in its own right.

Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT) Monitor

The CRT display is made up of small picture elements called pixels. The smaller the pixels,
the better the image clarity, or resolution. It takes more than one illuminated pixel to form
whole character, such as the letter e in the word help.
A finite number of characters can be displayed on a screen at once. The screen can be
divided into a series of character boxes - fixed location on the screen where a standard
character can be placed. Most screens are capable of displaying 80 characters of data
horizontally and 25 lines vertically. There are some disadvantages of CRT:

Large in Size

High power consumption

The first computer monitors used cathode ray tubes (CRTs). Prior to the advent
of home computers in the late 1970s, it was common for a video display
terminal (VDT) using a CRT to be physically integrated with a keyboard and other
components of the system in a single large chassis. The display
was monochrome and far less sharp and detailed than on a modern flat-panel
monitor, necessitating the use of relatively large text and severely limiting the amount
of information that could be displayed at one time. High-resolutionCRT displays were
developed for specialized military, industrial and scientific applications but they were
far too costly for general use.

Some of the earliest home computers (such as the TRS-80 and Commodore PET)
were limited to monochrome CRT displays, but color display capability was already a
standard feature of the pioneering Apple II, introduced in 1977, and the specialty of
the more graphically sophisticated Atari 800, introduced in 1979. Either computer
could be connected to the antenna terminals of an ordinary color TV set or used with
a purpose-made CRT color monitor for optimum resolution and color quality. Lagging
several years behind, in 1981 IBM introduced the Color Graphics Adapter, which

could display four colors with a resolution of 320 x 200 pixels, or it could produce 640
x 200 pixels with two colors. In 1984 IBM introduced the Enhanced Graphics
Adapter which was capable of producing 16 colors and had a resolution of 640 x
350.[1]

By the end of the 1980s color CRT monitors that could clearly display 1024 x 768
pixels were widely available and increasingly affordable. During the following decade
maximum display resolutions gradually increased and prices continued to fall. CRT
technology remained dominant in the PC monitor market into the new millennium
partly because it was cheaper to produce and offered viewing angles close to 180
degrees.[2] CRTs still offer some image quality advantages over LCD displays but
improvements to the latter have made them much less obvious. The dynamic range
of early LCD panels was very poor, and although text and other motionless graphics
were sharper than on a CRT, an LCD characteristic known as pixel lag caused
moving graphics to appear noticeably smeared and blurry.

Liquid crystal display[edit]

Main articles: Liquid-crystal display and Thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display

There are multiple technologies that have been used to implement liquid crystal displays
(LCD). Throughout the 1990s, the primary use of LCD technology as computer monitors
was in laptops where the lower power consumption, lighter weight, and smaller physical
size of LCDs justified the higher price versus a CRT. Commonly, the same laptop would be
offered with an assortment of display options at increasing price points: (active or passive)
monochrome, passive color, or active matrix color (TFT). As volume and manufacturing
capability have improved, the monochrome and passive color technologies were dropped
from most product lines.
TFT-LCD is a variant of LCD which is now the dominant technology used for computer
monitors.[3]
The first standalone LCD displays appeared in the mid-1990s selling for high prices. As
prices declined over a period of years they became more popular, and by 1997 were
competing with CRT monitors. Among the first desktop LCD computer monitors was the
Eizo L66 in the mid-1990s, the Apple Studio Display in 1998, and the Apple Cinema Display
in 1999. In 2003, TFT-LCDs outsold CRTs for the first time, becoming the primary
technology used for computer monitors.[2] The main advantages of LCDs over CRT displays
are that LCDs consume less power, take up much less space, and are considerably lighter.
The now common active matrix TFT-LCD technology also has less flickering than CRTs,

which reduces eye strain.[4] On the other hand, CRT monitors have superior contrast, have
superior response time, are able to use multiple screen resolutions natively, and there is no
discernible flicker if the refresh rate is set to a sufficiently high value. LCD monitors have
now very high temporal accuracy and can be used for vision research. [5]

OLED
An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which
the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound which emits light in
response to an electric current. This layer of organic semiconductor is situated between two
electrodes; typically, at least one of these electrodes is transparent. OLEDs are used to
create digital displays in devices such as television screens,computer monitors, portable
systems such as mobile phones, handheld game consoles and PDAs. A major area of
research is the development of white OLED devices for use in solid-state
lighting applications.[1][2][3]
There are two main families of OLED: those based on small molecules and those
employing polymers. Adding mobile ions to an OLED creates a light-emitting
electrochemical cell (LEC) which has a slightly different mode of operation. OLED displays
can use either passive-matrix (PMOLED) or active-matrix addressing schemes. Activematrix OLEDs (AMOLED) require a thin-film transistor backplane to switch each individual
pixel on or off, but allow for higher resolution and larger display sizes.
An OLED display works without a backlight; thus, it can display deep black levels and can
be thinner and lighter than a liquid crystal display(LCD). In low ambient light conditions
(such as a dark room), an OLED screen can achieve a higher contrast ratio than an LCD,
regardless of whether the LCD uses cold cathode fluorescent lamps or an LED backlight.

Raster graphics
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image is a dot matrix data structure representing a
generally rectangulargrid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other
display medium. Raster images are stored inimage files with varying formats.[1][self-published source?]
A bitmap, a single-bit raster,[2] corresponds bit-for-bit with an image displayed on a screen,
generally in the same format used for storage in the display's video memory, or maybe as a
device-independent bitmap. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of
the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel (a color depth, which determines the
number of colors it can represent).[3]

The printing and prepress industries know raster graphics as contones (from
"continuous tones"). The opposite to contones is "line work", usually implemented as vector
graphics in digital systems.[4]

Bitmap
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article be merged with Raster graphics.
(Discuss) Proposed since March 2014.
For other uses, see Bitmap (disambiguation).
In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers)
to bits, that is, values which are zero or one. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index.

Bitmap image downsampled from an Inkscape vectorial image

In computer graphics, when the domain is a rectangle (indexed by two coordinates) a

bitmap gives a way to store a binary image, that is, an image in which each pixel is either
black or white (or any two colors).
The more general term pixmap refers to a map of pixels, where each one may store more
than two colors, thus using more than one bit per pixel. Often bitmap is used for this as well.
In some contexts, the term bitmap implies one bit per pixel, while pixmap is used for images
with multiple bits per pixel. [1][2]
A bitmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images.
The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map
of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to the
similar concept of a spatially mapped array of pixels. Raster images in general may be
referred to as bitmaps or pixmaps, whether synthetic or photographic, in files or memory.
Many graphical user interfaces use bitmaps in their built-in graphics subsystems; [3] for
example, the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 platforms' GDI subsystem, where the specific
format used is the Windows and OS/2 bitmap file format, usually named with the file
extension of .BMP (or .DIB for device-independent bitmap). Besides BMP, other file formats
that store literal bitmaps include InterLeaved Bitmap (ILBM), Portable Bitmap (PBM), X
Bitmap (XBM), and Wireless Application Protocol Bitmap (WBMP). Similarly, most other
image file formats, such as JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and GIF, also store bitmap images (as
opposed to vector graphics), but they are not usually referred to as bitmaps, since they
usecompressed formats internally.

Vector graphics

Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves,
and shapes or polygonsall of which are based on mathematical expressionsto
represent images in computer graphics. Vector graphics are based on vectors (also called
paths), which lead through locations called control points or nodes. Each of these points
has a definite position on the x and y axes of the work plane and determines the direction of
the path; further, each path may be assigned a stroke color, shape, thickness, and fill.
These properties don't increase the size of vector graphics files in a substantial manner, as
all information resides in the document's structure, which describes solely how the vector
should be drawn.[citation needed]
The term vector graphics is typically used only for 2D (planar) graphics objects, in order to
distinguish them from 2D raster graphics, which are also very common. 3D graphics as
commonly implemented today (e.g. in OpenGL) are typically described using primitives like
3D points and polygons connecting these (which in turn describe surfaces); these 3D
primitives are much more similar to vector graphics than to raster graphics, but aren't
explicitly called vector graphics. The equivalent of raster graphics in the 3D world are voxelbased graphics.[1][2]
Some authors have criticized the term vector graphics as being confusing.[3][4] In
particular, vector graphics does not simply refer to graphics described by Euclidean vectors.
[5]

Some authors have proposed to use object-oriented graphics instead.[3][6][7] However this

term can also be confusing as it can be read as any kind of graphics implemented
using object-oriented programming.[3]

Printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which makes a persistent human-readable
representation of graphics or text on paper or similar physical media. The two most
common printer mechanisms are black and white laser printers used for common
documents, and color ink jet printers which can produce high-quality photograph-quality
output.
The world's first computer printer was a 19th-century mechanically driven apparatus
invented by Charles Babbage for his difference engine.[1] This system used a series of metal
rods with characters printed on them and stuck a roll of paper against the rods to print the
characters. The first commercial printers generally used mechanisms from electric
typewriters and Teletype machines, which operated in a similar fashion. The demand for
higher speed led to the development of new systems specifically for computer use. Among
the systems widely used through the 1980s 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 dotmatrix 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 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.

Impact printers
An impact printer has mechanisms resembling those of a typewriter. It forms
characters or images by striking a mechanism such as a print hammer or
wheel against an inked ribbon, leaving an image on paper. Impact printers are dying
out; however, you may still come in contact with a dot-matrix printer. A dot-matrix
printer contains a print head of small pins that strike an inked ribbon, forming
characters or images. Print heads are available with 9, 18, or 24 pins; the 24pin head offers the best print quality.
Dot-matrix printers permit a choice between output of draft quality; a coarser-looking
72 dots per inch vertically, which may be acceptable for drafts of papers and reports, and
near-letter-quality, a crisper-looking 144 dots per inch vertically, which is more suitable
for a finished product to be shown to other people.

Dot matrix printing

Dot matrix printing or impact matrix printing is a type of computer printing which uses a
print head that moves back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints
by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like the print
mechanism on a typewriter. However, unlike a typewriter or daisy wheel printer, letters are

drawn out of a dot matrix, and thus, varied fonts and arbitrary graphics can be produced. In
the market one of the most popular printers is Dot Matrix Printer. These printers are popular
because of their ease of printing and economical price. Each character printed is in form of
pattern of dots and head consists of a Matrix of Pins of size (5*7, 7*9, 9*7 or 9*9) which
come out to form a character that is why it is called Dot Matrix Printer.

Daisy wheel printing

Daisy wheel printing is an impact printing technology invented in 1969 by David S.
Lee at Diablo Data Systems. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with
typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to premium typewriters such
as theIBM Selectric, but two to three times faster. Daisy wheel printing was used
in electronic typewriters, word processors and computers from 1972. The daisy wheel is
considered to be so named because of its resemblance to the daisy flower.[1]
By 1980 daisy wheel printers had become the dominant technology for high-quality
print. Dot-matrix impact or thermal printers were used where higher speed was required and
poor print quality was acceptable. Both technologies were rapidly superseded for most
purposes when dot-based printersin particular laser printersthat could print any
characters or graphics rather than being restricted to a limited character set became able to
produce output of comparable quality. Daisy wheel technology is now found only in some
electronic

Line printer
The line printer is an impact printer in which one line of text is printed at a time. They are
mostly associated with unit record equipment and the early days of digital computing, but
the technology is still in use. Print speeds of 600 lines-per-minute (approximately 10 pages
per minute) were achieved in the 1950s, later increasing to as much as 1200 lpm. Line
printers print a complete line at a time and have speeds in the range of 150 to 2500 lines
per minute. The different types of line printers are drum printers and chain printers. A highspeed printer capable of printing an entire line at one time. A fast line printer can print as
many as 3,000 lines per minute. The disadvantages of line printers are that they cannot
print graphics, the print quality is low, and they are very noisy.

Drum printe

In a typical drum printer design, a fixed font character set is engraved onto the periphery of
a number of print wheels, the number matching the number of columns (letters in a line) the

printer could print. The wheels, joined to form a large drum (cylinder), spin at high speed
and paper and an inked ribbon is stepped (moved) past the print position. As the desired
character for each column passes the print position, a hammer strikes the paper from the
rear and presses the paper against the ribbon and the drum, causing the desired character
to be recorded on the continuous paper. Because the drum carrying the letterforms
(characters) remains in constant motion, the strike-and-retreat action of the hammers had to
be very fast. Typically, they were driven by voice coils mounted on the moving part of the
hammer.
Often the character sequences are staggered around the drum, shifting with each column.
This obviates the situation whereby all of the hammers fire simultaneously when printing a
line that consists of the same character in all columns, such as a complete line of dashes
("----").
Lower-cost printers did not use a hammer for each column. Instead, a hammer was
provided for every other column and the entire hammer bank was arranged to shift left and
right, driven by another voice coil. For this style of printer, two complete revolutions of the
character drum were required with one revolution being used to print all the "odd" columns
and another revolution being used to print all of the "even" columns. But in this way, only
half (plus one) the number of hammers, magnets, and the associated channels of drive
electronics were required.
At least one low-cost printer, made by CDC, achieved the same end by moving the paper
laterally while keeping the hammer bank at rest.
Dataproducts was a typical vendor of drum printers, often selling similar models with both a
full set of hammers (and delivering, for example 600 lines-per-minute of output) and a half
set of hammers (delivering 300 LPM)...

Non-Impact Printer
Early printers, such as dot matrix and daisywheel printers were called impact
printers, since they operated by striking an ink ribbon against the paper.
Most modern printers, including inkjet and laser printers, don't include an ink
ribbon and are considered to be non-impact printers.
Non-impact printers are generally much quieter than impact printers since
they don't physically strike the page. For example, inkjet printers spray tiny
drops of ink onto the page, while laser printers use a cylindrical drum that

rolls electrically charged ink onto the paper. Both of these methods are nonimpact and provide an efficient printing process that produces little sound.
The low impact nature of inkjet and laser printers also means they are less
likely to need maintenance or repairs than earlier impact printers.

Inkjet printing
Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling
droplets of ink onto paper, plastic, or other substrates. Inkjet printers are the most
commonly used type of printer,[1] and range from small inexpensive consumer models to
very large professional machines that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, or more. [2]
The concept of inkjet printing originated in the 19th century, and the technology was first
extensively developed in the early 1950s. Starting in the late 1970s inkjet printers that could
reproduce digital images generated by computers were developed, mainly
by Epson, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Canon. In the worldwide consumer market, four
manufacturers account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, HP, Epson,
and Lexmark, a 1991 spin-off from IBM.[3]
The emerging ink jet material deposition market also uses inkjet technologies, typically
printheads using piezoelectric crystals, to deposit materials directly on substrates.

Laser printing
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It very rapidly produces highquality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser
beam back & forth over an electron-charged, cylindrical drum, to define a differentiallycharged image. The drum then selectively collects electrically-charged, powdered ink
(i.e., toner), and transfers the image to the loaded paper, which is then heated in order to
permanently fuse the text/imagery. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction/all-inone inkjet printers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process; but, laser printing
differs from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of the
medium across the printer's photoreceptor. This enables laser printing to copy images more
quickly than most photocopiers.

Plotter
A graphics printer that draws images with ink pens. It actually draws point-to-point lines directly from
vector graphics files. Theplotter was the first computer output device that could print graphics as well
as accommodate full-size engineering and architectural drawings.Using different colored pens, it was
also able to print in color long before inkjet printers became an alternative.

Pen plotters are still the most affordable printing device for CAD use and offer resolution unlike any o
ther printer. The lines are not made up ofdots. They are actually drawn, providing infinite resolution.
See drum plotter, flatbed plotter, electrostatic plotter and inkjet printer. A device that draws
pictures on paper based on commands from a computer. Plotters differ from printers in that they draw lines
using a pen. As a result, they can produce continuous lines, whereas printers can only simulate lines by printing
a closely spaced series of dots. Multicolor plotters use different-colored pens to draw different colors.
In general, plotters are considerably more expensive than printers. They are used in
engineering applicationswhere precision is mandatory.

speaker
Computer speakers, or multimedia speakers, are speakers external to a computer, that
disable the lower fidelity built-in speaker. They often have a low-power internal amplifier.
The standard audio connection is a 3.5 mm (approximately 1/8 inch) stereo phone
connectoroften color-coded lime green (following the PC 99 standard) for computer sound
cards. A few use a RCA connector for input. There are also USB speakers which are
powered from the 5 volts at 500 milliamps provided by the USB port, allowing about 2.5
watts of output power. Computer speakers were introduced by Altec Lansing in 1990.[1]
Computer speakers range widely in quality and in price. The computer speakers typically
packaged with computer systems are small, plastic, and have mediocre sound quality.
Some computer speakers have equalization features such as bass and treble controls.
The internal amplifiers require an external power source, usually an AC adapter. More
sophisticated computer speakers can have a subwoofer unit, to enhance bass output, and
these units usually include the power amplifiers both for the bass speaker, and the small
satellite speakers.
Some computer displays have rather basic speakers built-in. Laptops come with integrated
speakers. Restricted space available in laptops means these speakers usually produce lowquality sound.
For some users, a lead connecting computer sound output to an existing stereo system is
practical. This normally yields much better results than small low-cost computer speakers.
Computer speakers can also serve as an economy amplifier for MP3 player use for those
who wish to not use headphones, although some models of computer speakers have
headphone jacks of their own.

Projector
A projector or image projector is an optical device that projects an image (or moving
images) onto a surface, commonly a projection screen.
Most projectors create an image by shining a light through a small transparent lens, but
some newer types of projectors can project the image directly, by using lasers. A virtual
retinal display, or retinal projector, is a projector that projects an image directly on
the retina instead of using an external projection screen.
The most common type of projector used today is called a video projector. Video projectors
are digital replacements for earlier types of projectors such as slide projectors and overhead
projectors. These earlier types of projectors were mostly replaced with digital video
projectors throughout the 1990s and early 2000s (decade), but old analog projectors are still
used at some places. The newest types of projectors are handheld projectors that
use lasers or LEDs to project images. Their projections are hard to see if there is too much
ambient light.
Movie theaters use a type of projector called a movie projector. Another type of projector is
the enlarger, a device used to produce photographic prints from negatives.

Often no larger than a toaster and only weighing a few pounds, a

projector is an output device that can take images generated by a
computer and reproduce them on a large, flat (usually lightly
colored) surface. For example, projectors are used in meetings
to help ensure that all participants can view the information being
presented. The picture is that of a ViewSonic projector.