COMPUTER PROJECT

ON

IMPACT PRINTERS

SUBMITED BY:TUSHAR GARG (BBS-1D) -8164

GAURAV PARMAR (BBS-1D) -8166
 OUTPUT DEVICES
Output is data that has been processed into a used form, called information.
An output device is any hardware component that can display information to
a user. The main and most common output devices in a computer system are
the Printer and the V.D.U.

PRINTERS

A printer is an output device that produces text and graphics on a physical medium
such as paper. Printed information is often called hard copy
because the information exists physically and is a more permanent form of
output than that presented on a VDU (Monitor). Printers can be grouped into
impact and non-impact printers.

1. An impact printer forms characters and graphics on a piece of paper by

striking a mechanism against an ink ribbon that physically contacts the
paper.

2. A non-impact printer forms characters and graphics on a piece of paper

without actually striking the paper.

The printing speed of a printer is usually expressed in pages per minute

(ppm). Printer resolution is often expressed in dpi (dots per inch). The larger
the number, the higher the resolution.

Advantages of printers include

1. Information produced is permanent.
2.
Disadvantages of printers include
2. The time to get the printout is slow, when compared with display
devices.
3. Paper is wasted for obtaining the output.
4. Printers are generally noisier than display devices.
 TYPES OF IMPACT PRINTERS
Daisy wheel printers

Daisy wheel printers use 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 the IBM "Golfball" Selectric, but three times faster. Daisy-wheel
printing was used in electronic typewriters, word processors and computer systems
from 1972.

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superseded for most purposes when dot-based printers—in particular laser printers—
that 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 typewriters.

Description

The heart of the system is an interchangeable metal or plastic "daisy wheel" holding
an entire character set as raised characters moulded on each "petal". In use a servo
motor rotates the daisy wheel to position the required character between the hammer
and the ribbon. The solenoid-operated hammer then fires, driving the character type
on to the ribbon and paper to print the character on the paper. The daisy wheel and
hammer are mounted on a sliding carriage similar to that used by dot matrix printers.

Different typefaces and sizes can be used by replacing the daisy wheel. It is possible
to use multiple fonts within a document: font changing is facilitated by printer driver
software which can position the carriage to the center of the platen and prompt the
user to change the wheel before continuing printing. However, printing a document
with frequent font changes and thus required frequent wheel changes was still an
arduous task.
Many daisy wheel machines offer a bold type facility, accomplished by double- or
triple-striking the specified character(s); servo-based printers advance the carriage
fractionally for a wider (and therefore blacker) character, while cheaper machines
perform a carriage return without a line feed to return to the beginning of the line,
space through all non-bold text, and restrike each bolded character. The inherent
imprecision in attempting to restrike on exactly the same spot after a carriage return
provides the same effect as the more expensive servo-based printers, with the unique
side effect that as the printer ages and wears, bold text becomes bolder.

Like all other impact printers, daisy wheel printers are noisy.

History

In 1972 a team at Diablo Systems led by engineer David S. Lee developed the first
commercially successful daisy-wheel printer, a device that was faster and more
flexible than IBM's golf-ball devices, being capable of 30 cps (characters per second),
whereas IBM's Selectric operated at 10 cps.

Xerox acquired Diablo that same year, following which Lee departed to set up Qume
Corporation in 1973. Xerox's Office Product Division had already been buying Diablo
printers for its Redactron text editors. After 7 years trying to make Diablo profitable,
the OPD focused on developing and selling the Diablo 630 which was mostly bought
by companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation. The Diablo 630 was capable of
producing letter quality output that was as good as that produced by an IBM Selectric
or Selectric-based printer, but at a lower cost. A further advantage over the Selectric-
based printers, was that it supported the entire ASCII printing character set. Its servo-
controlled carriage also permitted the use of proportional spaced fonts, where
characters occupy a different amount of horizontal space according to their width.

The Diablo 630 was sufficiently successful that virtually all later daisy wheel printers,
as well as many dot matrix printers and even the original Apple Laserwriter either
copied its command set or could emulate one. Daisy wheel printers from Diablo and
Lee's 1973 company Qume were the dominant high-end output technology for
computer and office automation applications by 1980, though high speed non-impact
techniques were already entering the market (e.g. IBM 6640 inkjet, Xerox 2700 and
IBM 6670 laser). From 1981 onwards the IBM PC's introduction of "Code page 437"
with 254 printable glyphs (including 40 shapes specifically for drawing forms), and
development of Xerox Star-influenced environments such as the Macintosh, GEM
and Windows made bit-mapped approaches more desirable, driving cost reductions
for laser printing and higher resolution for impact dot matrix printing.

Xerox later adapted Diablo's daisy wheel technology into a typewriter that would sell
for less than $50. An automated factory was constructed near Dallas that took less
than 30 minutes to assemble a Xerox typewriter. The Xerox typewriter was well
received but never achieved the projected sales numbers due to the advent of the PC
and word processing software. The typewriter was later modified to be compatible
with PCs but the engineering which made it a low cost device reduced its flexibility.[4]
By the mid-1980s daisy wheel technology was rapidly becoming obsolete due to the
growing spread of affordable laser and inkjet machines, and daisy wheel machines
soon disappeared except for the small remaining typewriter market.
Graphics

Although the daisy wheel principle is basically inappropriate for printing bitmap
graphics, there were attempts to enable them to do so. Most daisy wheel printers
supported a relatively coarse and extremely slow graphics mode by printing the image
entirely out of full stops (also called periods). This required a mechanism capable of
pixel by pixel movement, both horizontally and vertically, and low-end printers were
incapable of it.[5] Given the slow speed and the coarse resolution this was not a
feasible technique for printing large images, but could usefully print a small logo onto
a letterhead and then the following letter, all in a single unattended print run without
changing the print element.

Consideration was also given to optimising graphic printing by changing the glyphs
on the daisy wheel to a set that would be able to print all the required bitmap
combinations more quickly, without requiring an impact for every single dot. This
would have the advantage that vertical dot combinations could be printed in a single
impact, without requiring fine rotation control of the platen roller. However it would
require a specialised daisy wheel so printing of a letter and letterhead would require a
two-step process with a manual wheel change in-between.[6] As the development of
this technique post-dated the widespread availability of 24-pin dot matrix printers and
coincided with the arrival of affordable laser printers in offices, it was never a popular
approach.

Advantages of a daisywheel printer

_ Can print letter quality characters.

Disadvantages of a daisywheel printer

_ Printing speed is very slow.
_ Cannot print graphics.
 Dot matrix printer

A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a
print head that runs 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. Because the printing involves mechanical pressure, these printers can
create carbon copies and carbonless copies.

These machines can be highly durable. When they do wear out, it is generally due to
ink invading the guide plate of the print head, causing grit to adhere to it; this grit
slowly causes the channels in the guide plate to wear from circles into ovals or slots,
providing less and less accurate guidance to the printing wires. Eventually, even with
tungsten blocks and titanium pawls, the printing becomes too unclear to read.

Although nearly all inkjet, thermal, and laser printers print closely-spaced dots rather
than continuous lines or characters, it is not customary to call them dot matrix
printers.

HOW DOES A DOT MATRIX PRINTER WORKS

Each dot is produced by a tiny metal rod, also called a "wire" or "pin", which is driven
forward by the power of a tiny electromagnet or solenoid, either directly or through
small levers (pawls). Facing the ribbon and the paper is a small guide plate (often
made of an artificial jewel such as sapphire or ruby[1]) pierced with holes to serve as
guides for the pins. The moving portion of the printer is called the print head, and
when running the printer as a generic text device generally prints one line of text at a
time. Most dot matrix printers have a single vertical line of dot-making equipment on
their print heads; others have a few interleaved rows in order to improve dot density.
 Early Dot Matrix Printers

Upper image: Inmac ink ribbon cartridge with black ink for Dot matrix printer
Lower image: Inked and folded lengthy ribbon squeeze in the cartridge, zoom in of
inside part, pull ribbon in mechanism and ribbon.

The LA30 was a 30 character/second dot matrix printer introduced in 1970 by Digital
Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts. It printed 80 columns of
uppercase-only 5x7 dot matrix characters across a unique-sized paper. The printhead
was driven by a stepper motor and the paper was advanced by a somewhat-unreliable
and definitely noisy solenoid ratchet drive. The LA30 was available with both a
parallel interface and a serial interface; however, the serial LA30 required the use of
fill characters during the carriage-return operation.

The LA30 was followed in 1974 by the LA36, which achieved far greater commercial
success, becoming for a time the standard dot matrix computer terminal. The LA36
used the same print head as the LA30 but could print on forms of any width up to 132
columns of mixed-case output on standard green bar fanfold paper. The carriage was
moved by a much-more-capable servo drive using a dc motor and an optical
encoder/tachometer. The paper was moved by a stepper motor. The LA36 was only
available with a serial interface but unlike the earlier LA30, no fill characters were
required. This was possible because, while the printer never communicated at faster
than 30 characters per second, the mechanism was actually capable of printing at 60
characters per second. During the carriage return period, characters were buffered for
subsequent printing at full speed during a catch-up period. The two-tone buzz
produced by 60 character-per-second catch-up printing followed by 30 character-per-
second ordinary printing was a distinctive feature of the LA36.
Digital then broadened the basic LA36 line onto a wide variety of dot matrix printers
including:

• LA180 -- 180 c/s line printer

• LS120 -- 120 c/s terminal
• LA120 -- 180 c/s advanced terminal
• LA34 -- Cost-reduced terminal
• LA38 -- An LA34 with more features
• LA12 -- A portable terminal

In 1970, Centronics (then of Hudson, New Hampshire) introduced a dot matrix

printer, the Centronics 101. The search for a reliable printer mechanism led it to
develop a relationship with Brother Industries, Ltd. of Japan, and the sale of
Centronics-badged Brother printer mechanisms equipped with a Centronics print head
and Centronics electronics. Unlike Digital, Centronics concentrated on the low-end
line printer marketplace with their distinctive units. In the process, they designed the
parallel electrical interface that was to become standard on most dot matrix printers
(indeed, most printers in general) until it started to be replaced by the Universal Serial
Bus (USB) in the late 1990s.

Dot matrix usage

Personal Computers

An Epson MX-80

In the 1970s and 1980s, dot matrix impact printers were generally considered the best
combination of expense and versatility, and until the 1990s they were by far the most
common form of printer used with personal computers.

The Epson MX-80 was the groundbreaking model that sparked the initial popularity
of impact printers in the personal computer market. The MX-80 combined
affordability with solid text output (for its time). Early impact printers (including the
MX) were notoriously loud during operation, a result of the hammer-like mechanism
in the print head. Furthermore, the MX-80's low dot density (60dpi horizontal, 72dpi
vertical) produced printouts of a distinctive "computerized" quality. When compared
to the crisp typewriter quality of a daisy-wheel printer, the dot-matrix printer's
legibility appeared especially bad. In office applications, output quality was a serious
issue, as the dot-matrix text's readability would rapidly degrade with each photocopy
generation.
Initially, third-party software (such as the Bradford printer enhancement program)
offered a quick fix to the quality issue. The software utilized a variety of software
techniques to increase print quality; general strategies were doublestrike (print each
line twice), and double-density mode (slow the print head to allow denser and more
precise dot placement). Such add-on software was inconvenient to use, because it
required the user to remember to run the enhancement program before each printer
session (to activate the enhancement mode). Furthermore, not all enhancement
software was compatible with all programs.

Early personal computer software focused on the processing of text, but as graphics
displays became ubiquitous throughout the personal computer world, users wanted to
print both text and images. Ironically, whereas the daisy-wheel printer and pen-plotter
struggled to reproduce bitmap images, the first dot-matrix impact printers (including
the MX-80) lacked the ability to print computer-generated images. Yet the dot-matrix
print head was well-suited to this task, and the capability quickly became a standard
feature on all PC-oriented dot-matrix printers.

Progressive hardware improvements to impact printers boosted the carriage speed,

added more (typeface) font options, increased the dot density (from 60dpi up to
240dpi), and added pseudo-color printing. Faster carriage speeds meant faster (and
sometimes louder) printing. Additional typefaces allowed the user to vary the text
appearance of printouts. Proportional-spaced fonts allowed the printer to imitate the
non-uniform character widths of a typesetter. Increased dot density allowed for more
detailed, darker printouts. The impact pins of the printhead were constrained to a
minimum size (for structural durability), and dot densities above 100dpi merely
caused adjacent dots to overlap. While the pin diameter placed a lower limit on the
smallest reproducible graphic detail, manufacturers were able to use higher dot
density to great effect in improving text quality.

Several dot-matrix impact printers (such as the Epson FX series) offered 'user-
downloadable fonts'. This gave the user the flexibility to print with different
typefaces. PC software downloaded a user-defined fontset into the printer's memory,
replacing the built-in typeface with the user's selection. Any subsequent text printout
would use the downloaded font, until the printer was powered off or soft-reset.
Several third-party programs were developed to allow easier management of this
capability. With a supported word-processor program (such as WordPerfect 5.1), the
user could embed up to 2 NLQ custom typefaces in addition to the printer's built-in
(ROM) typefaces. (The later rise of WYSIWYG software philosophy rendered
downloaded fonts obsolete.)

Single-strike and Multi-strike ribbons were an attempt to address issues in the ribbon's
ink quality. Standard printer ribbons used the same principles as typewriter ribbons.
The printer would be at its darkest with a newly installed ribbon cartridge, but would
gradually grow fainter with each successive printout. The variation in darkness over
the ribbon cartridge's lifetime prompted the introduction of alternative ribbon
formulations. Single-strike ribbons used a carbon-like substance in typewriter ribbons
transfer. As the ribbon was only usable for a single loop (rated in terms of 'character
count'), the blackness was of consistent, outstanding darkness. Multi-strike ribbons
gave an increase in ribbon life, at the expense of quality.
Pseudo-Color

Several manufacturers implemented color dot-matrix impact printing through a multi-

color ribbon. Color was achieved through a multi-pass composite printing process.
During each pass, the print head struck a different section of the ribbon (one primary
color.) For a 4-color ribbon, each printed line of output required a total of 4 passes. In
some color printers, such as the Apple ImageWriter II, the printer moved the ribbon
relative to the fixed print head assembly. In other models, the print head was tilted
against a stationary ribbon.

Due to their poor color quality and increased operating expense, color impact models
never replaced their monochrome counterparts.[citation needed] As the color ribbon was
used in the printer, the black ink section would gradually contaminate the other 3
colors, changing the consistency of printouts over the life of the ribbon. Hence, the
color dot-matrix was suitable for abstract illustrations and piecharts, but not for
photo-realistic reproduction. Dot-matrix thermal-transfer printers offered more
consistent color quality, but consumed printer film, still more expensive. Color
printing in the home would only become ubiquitous much later, with the ink-jet
printer.The speed is usually 30-550 cps

Near Letter Quality (NLQ)

Text quality was a recurring issue with dot-matrix printers. Near Letter Quality mode
endowed dot-matrix printers with a simulated typewriter-like quality. By using
multiple passes of the carriage, and higher dot density, the printer could increase the
effective resolution. For example, the Epson FX-86 could achieve a theoretical
addressable dot-grid of 240 by 216 dots/inch using a print head with a vertical dot
density of only 72 dots/inch, by making multiple passes of the print head for each
line. For 240 by 144 dots/inch, the print head would make one pass, printing 240 by
72 dots/inch, then the printer would advance the paper by half of the vertical dot pitch
(1/144 inch), then the print head would make a second pass. For 240 by 216 dots/inch,
the print head would make three passes with smaller paper movement (1/3 vertical dot
pitch, or 1/216 inch) between the passes. To cut hardware costs, some manufacturers
merely used a double strike (doubly printing each line) to increase the printed text's
boldness, resulting in bolder but still jagged text. In all cases, NLQ mode incurred a
severe speed penalty. Not surprisingly, all printers retained one or more 'draft' modes
for high-speed printing.

NLQ became a standard feature on all dot-matrix printers. While NLQ was well
received in the IBM PC market, the Apple Macintosh market did not use NLQ mode
at all, as it did not rely on the printer's own fonts. Mac word-processing applications
used fonts stored in the computer. For non-PostScript (raster) printers, the final raster
image was produced by the computer and sent to the printer, which meant dot-matrix
printers on the Mac platform exclusively used raster ("graphics") printing mode. For
near-letter-quality output, the Mac would simply double the resolution used by the
printer, to 144 dpi, and use a screen font twice the point size desired. Since the Mac's
screen resolution (72 dpi) was exactly half of the ImageWriter's maximum, this
worked perfectly, creating text at exactly the desired size.
24-pin printers

By the mid 1980s, manufacturers had increased the pincount of the impact printhead
from 9 pins to 18, or 24. (At 27 pins, the Apple ImageWriter LQ held the record for
consumer market). The increased pin-count permitted superior print-quality which
was necessary for success in Asian markets to print legible CJK characters. In the PC
market, nearly all 9-pin printers printed at a defacto-standard vertical pitch of
9/72 inch (per printhead pass, ie 8 lpi). Epson's 24-pin LQ-series rose to become the
new de-facto standard, at 24/180 inch (per pass - 7.5 lpi). Not only could a 24-pin
printer lay down a denser dot-pattern in a single-pass, it could simultaneously cover a
larger area.

Compared to the older 9-pin models, a new 24-pin impact printer not only produced
better-looking NLQ text, it printed the page quicker (largely due to the 24-pin's ability
to print NLQ with a single pass). 24-pin printers repeated this feat in bitmap graphics
mode, producing higher-quality graphics in reduced time. While the text-quality of a
24-pin was still visibly inferior to a true letter-quality printer—the daisy wheel or
laser-printer, the typical 24-pin impact printer outpaced most daisy-wheel models.

As manufacturing costs declined, 24-pin printers gradually replaced 9-pin printers.

24-pin printers reached a dot-density of 360x360 dpi, a marketing figure aimed at
misleading potential buyers of competing ink-jet and laser-printers.[citation needed] 24-pin
NLQ fonts generally used a dot-density of 360x180, the highest allowable with
single-pass printing. Multipass NLQ was abandoned, as most manufacturers felt the
marginal quality improvement did not justify the tradeoff in speed. Most 24-pin
printers offered 2 or more NLQ typefaces, but the rise of WYSIWYG software and
GUI environments such as Microsoft Windows ended the usefulness of NLQ.

Use of dot matrix printers today

The desktop impact printer was gradually replaced by the inkjet printer. When
Hewlett-Packard's patents expired on steam-propelled photolithographically-produced
ink-jet heads, the inkjet mechanism became available to the printer industry. The
inkjet was superior in nearly all respects: comparatively quiet operation, faster print
speed, and output quality almost as good as a laser printer. By the mid-1990s, inkjet
technology had surpassed dot-matrix in the mainstream market.

As of 2005, dot matrix impact technology remains in use in devices such as cash
registers, ATM, and many other point-of-sales terminals. Thermal printing is
gradually supplanting them in these applications. Full-size dot-matrix impact printers
are still used to print multi-part stationery, for example at bank tellers, and other
applications where use of tractor feed paper is desirable such as data logging and
aviation. Some are even fitted with USB interfaces as standard to aid connection to
modern legacy-free computers. Dot matrix printers are also more tolerant of the hot
and dirty operating conditions found in many industrial settings. The simplicity and
durability of the design allows users who are not "computer literate" to easily perform
routine tasks such as changing ribbons and correcting paper jams. Some companies,
such as WeP Peripherals,Epson, Okidata, Olivetti, Lexmark, and TallyGenicom still
produce serial and line printers. Today, a new dot matrix printer actually costs more
than most inkjet printers and some entry level laser printers. However, not much
should be read into this price difference as the printing costs for inkjet and laser
printers are a great deal higher than for dot matrix printers, and the inkjet/laser printer
manufacturers effectively use their monopoly over arbitrarily priced printer cartridges
to subsidise the initial cost of the printer itself (see Inkjet printer -> Underlying
business model). Dot matrix ribbons are a commodity and are not monopolised by the
printer manufacturers themselves.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

Dot matrix printers, like any impact printer, can print on multi-part stationery or make
carbon-copies. Impact printers have one of the lowest printing costs per page. As the
ink is running out, the printout gradually fades rather than suddenly stopping partway
through a job. They are able to use continuous paper rather than requiring individual
sheets, making them useful for data logging. They are good, reliable workhorses ideal
for use in situations where printed content is more important than quality. The ink
ribbon also does not easily dry out, including both the ribbon stored in the casing as
well as the portion that is stretched in front of the print head; this unique property
allows the dot-matrix printer to be used in environments where printer duty can be
rare, for instance, as with a Fire Alarm Control Panel's output.

Disadvantages

Impact printers create noise when the pins or typeface strike the ribbon to the paper.
Sound dampening enclosures may have to be used in quiet environments. They can
only print lower-resolution graphics, with limited color performance, limited quality,
and lower speeds compared to non-impact printers. While they support fanfold paper
with tractor holes well, single-sheet paper may have to be wound in and aligned by
hand, which is relatively time-consuming, or a sheet feeder may be utilized which can
have a lower paper feed reliability. When printing labels on release paper, they are
prone to paper jams when a print wire snags the leading edge of the label while
printing at its very edge. For text-only labels (e.g., mailing labels), a daisy wheel
printer or band printer may offer better print quality and a lesser chance of damaging
the paper.

Future of dot-matrix printers

The main use of dot-matrix printers is in areas of intensive transaction-processing

systems that churn out quite a lot of printing. Many companies who might have
started off with dot-matrix printers are not easily convinced to go for paperless
options or printers based on other technologies because of the speed advantage of dot-
matrix printers, as well as simply having many years of experience with dot matrix
and being reluctant to change to a new, unproven method.

Drum printer
 Fragment of line printer drum
showing "%" characters.

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 are 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 the number of hammers, magnets, and the
associated channels of drive electronics were required.

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).

Chain (train) printer

Chain printers (also known as train printers) placed the type on moving bars (a
horizontally-moving chain). As with the drum printer, as the correct character passed
by each column, a hammer was fired from behind the paper. Compared to drum
printers, chain printers had the advantage that the type chain could usually be changed
by the operator. By selecting chains that had a smaller character set (for example, just
numbers and a few punctuation marks), the printer could print much faster than if the
chain contained the entire upper- and lower-case alphabet, numbers, and all special
symbols. This was because, with many more instances of the numbers appearing in
the chain, the time spent waiting for the correct character to "pass by" was greatly
reduced. Common letters and symbols would appear more often on the chain,
according to the frequency analysis of the likely input. It was also possible to play
primitive tunes on these printers by timing the nonsense of the printout to the
sequence on the chain, a rather primitive piano. IBM was probably the best-known
chain printer manufacturer and the IBM 1403 is probably the most famous example of
a chain printer.

HOW DOES CHAIN PRINTER WORKS

Print characters are contained in a chain, which is moved continuously at a rapid rate by two
geared pulleys. Circuitry within the printer senses when the correct character appears at the
desired print position on the page. At that point, a hammer strikes the page. This action
presses the paper against a ribbon and against the character located at that position. The
result leaves an impression of the character. As the chain continues to move transversely
across the page, additional characters are printed as they reach the position required by the
commands of the computer.
When the requirements of the printed line are fulfilled, the printer carriage control moves the
page to the next line position.
Paper (forms) handling

All line printers used paper provided in boxes of continuous fan-fold forms rather
than cut-sheets. The paper was usually perforated to tear into cut sheets if desired and
was commonly printed with alternating white and light-green areas, allowing the
reader to easily follow a line of text across the page. This was the iconic "green bar"
form that dominated the early computer age. Pre-printed forms were also commonly
used (for printing cheques, invoices, etc.). A common task for the system operator
was to change from one paper form to another as one print job completed and another
was to begin. Some lineprinters had covers that opened automatically when the printer
required attention.

Standard "green bar" page sizes included portrait-format pages of 8½ × 11 inches,

usually printed at 80 columns by 66 lines (at 6 lines per inch) or 88 lines (at 8 LPI),
and landscape-format pages of 14 × 11 inches, usually printed at 132 columns by 66
or 88 lines. Also common were landscape-format pages of 14 × 8½ inches, allowing
for 132 columns by 66 lines (at 8 LPI) on a more compact page.

These continuous forms were advanced through the printer by means of tractors
(sprockets or sprocket belts). Depending on the sophistication of the printer, there
might simply be two tractors at the top of the printer (pulling the paper) or tractors at
the top and bottom (thereby maintaining paper tension within the printer). The
horizontal position of the tractors was usually adjustable to accommodate different
forms. The earlist printers by IBM used a hydraulic motor to move the forms. In later
Line printers, High-speed servomechanisms usually drove the tractors, allowing very
rapid positioning of the paper, both for advancing line-by-line and slewing to the top
of the next form. The faster line printers, of necessity, also used "stackers" to re-fold
and stack the fan-fold forms as they emerged from the printer.

The high-speed motion of the paper often developed large electrostatic charges. Line
printers frequently used a variety of discharge brushes and active (corona discharge-
based) static eliminators to discharge these accumulated charges.

Many printers supported ASA carriage control characters which provided a limited
degree of control over the paper, by specifying how far to advance the paper between
printed lines. Various means of providing vertical tabulation were provided, ranging
from punched paper tape to fully electronic (software-controlable) tab simulation

Origins

The first line printer was the "Potter Flying Typewriter", in 1952. "Instead of working
laboriously, one character at a time, it prints whole lines at once, 300 lines per minute,
on a paper band. ... Heart of the machine is a continuously spinning disk with the
necessary letters and numbers on its rim. ... As the disk revolves, 80 electrically
operated hammers tap the back of the paper against an inked ribbon in contact with
the disk, thus printing the proper characters in the proper places on the line." [1]
Current applications

This technology is still in use in a number of applications. It is usually both faster and
has lower total cost of ownership, including purchase price, consumables, paper, and
maintenance, than laser printers. Line printers continue to be used for printing box
labels, medium volume accounting and other large business applications. Multi-part
paper forms (carbon copies or carbonless copy paper) printed in one operation are
sometimes useful. The limited character set, fixed character spacing, and relatively
poor print quality make impact line printers unsuitable for correspondence, books, and
other applications requiring high print quality.

Laser printers became popular when word processing replaced typewriters. In high
volume printing, continuous form laser printers have become popular. These no
longer had fixed columns or monospaced type and offered a range of fonts as well as
graphics. The technology operates in a way similar to single sheet laser printing.

The names of the lp and lpr commands in Unix were derived from the term "line
printer". Analogously, many other systems call their printing devices "LP", "LPT", or
some similar variant, whether these devices are in fact line printers or other types of
printers. These references served to distinguish formatted final output from normal
interactive output from the system, which in many cases in line printer days was also
printed on paper (as by a teletype) but not by a line printer.
 CONCLUSION
The general simplicity of impact printing, i.e., an actuator impacting ribbon and
paper to create a mark, translates into low cost and high reliability. Additionally,
this printing can take place on the widest variety of forms and with the largest
tolerance to environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, dust, etc.).

Advances made in print actuator design over the past ten years have led to an
effective quadrupling in printer performance. Additional improvements in function
such as bar-code capabilities, condensed print, paper handling, and noise
abatement have enabled impact printing to remain an important printing
technology.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Heathcore, P.M. Computing, 3rd Edition. London (1998). Letts Educational. Pgs. 336-338

Computer Works

Microsoft Encarta 96 Encyclopaedia World English Edition

Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopaedia

French, C.S. Computer Studies, 4th Edition. London (1993). DP Publications Ltd Pg. 161-168

Pau Latorre, PRINTERS

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