In computing, a printer is a peripheral which makes a persistent

human-readable representation of graphics or text on paper or similar

physical media.[1] The world's first computer printer was a 19th-century
mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for
his difference engine.[2] 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 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 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 update 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. Even the
desire for printed output for "offline reading" while on mass transit or
aircraft has been displaced by e-book readers and tablet computers.
Today, traditional printers are being used more for special purposes,
like printing photographs or artwork, and are no longer a must-have
peripheral.
 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. These devices
are in their earliest stages of development and have not yet become
commonplace.
Contents
[hide]

1Types of printers

2Technology

o 2.1Modern print technology

2.1.1Toner-based printers

2.1.2Liquid inkjet printers

2.1.3Solid ink printers

2.1.4Dye-sublimation printers

2.1.5Thermal printers

o 2.2Obsolete and special-purpose printing technologies

2.2.1Impact printers

2.2.1.1Typewriter-derived printers

2.2.1.2Teletypewriter-derived printers

2.2.1.3Daisy wheel printers

2.2.1.4Dot-matrix printers

2.2.1.5Line printers
 2.2.2Liquid ink electrostatic printers

2.2.3Plotters

o 2.3Other printers

3Attributes

o 3.1Printer control languages

o 3.2Printing speed

o 3.3Printing mode

o 3.4Monochrome, colour and photo printers

o 3.5Page yield

o 3.6Cost per page

o 3.7Business model

o 3.8Printer steganography

o 3.9Wireless printers

4See also

5References

6External links

Types of printers[edit]
Personal printers are primarily 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.
[3]
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
with 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 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.

Technology[edit]
The choice of print technology has a great effect on the cost of the
printer and cost of operation, speed, quality and permanence of
documents, and noise. Some printer technologies don't work with
certain types of physical media, such as carbon
paper or transparencies.
A second aspect of printer technology that is often forgotten is
resistance to alteration: liquid ink, such as from an inkjet head or fabric
ribbon, becomes absorbed by the paper fibers, so documents printed
with liquid ink are more difficult to alter than documents printed with
toner or solid inks, which do not penetrate below the paper surface.
Cheques can be printed with liquid ink or on special cheque paper
with toner anchorage so that alterations may be detected. [4] The
machine-readable lower portion of a cheque must be printed
using MICR toner or ink. Banks and other clearing houses employ
automation equipment that relies on the magnetic flux from these
specially printed characters to function properly.
Modern print technology[edit]
The following printing technologies are routinely found in modern
printers:
Toner-based printers[edit]
Main article: Laser printer
A laser printer rapidly produces high quality text and graphics. As with
digital photocopiers and multifunction printers (MFPs), laser printers
employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog
photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of
a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.
Another toner-based printer is the LED printer which uses an array
of LEDs instead of a laser to cause toner adhesion to the print drum.
Liquid inkjet printers[edit]

Liquid ink cartridge from Hewlett-Packard HP 845C inkjet printer

Inkjet printers operate by propelling variably sized droplets of liquid ink

onto almost any sized page. They are the most common type of
computer printer used by consumers.
Solid ink printers[edit]
Main article: Solid ink
Solid ink printers, also known as phase-change printers, are a type
of thermal transfer printer. They use solid sticks of CMYK-coloured
ink, similar in consistency to candle wax, which are melted and fed
into a piezo crystal operated print-head. The printhead sprays the ink
on a rotating, oil coated drum. The paper then passes over the print
drum, at which time the image is immediately transferred, or
transfixed, to the page. Solid ink printers are most commonly used as
colour office printers, and are excellent at printing on transparencies
and other non-porous media. Solid ink printers can produce excellent
results. Acquisition and operating costs are similar to laser printers.
Drawbacks of the technology include high energy consumption and
long warm-up times from a cold state. Also, some users complain that
the resulting prints are difficult to write on, as the wax tends to repel
inks from pens, and are difficult to feed through automatic document
feeders, but these traits have been significantly reduced in later
models. In addition, this type of printer is only available from one
manufacturer, Xerox, manufactured as part of their Xerox
Phaser office printer line. Previously, solid ink printers were
manufactured by Tektronix, but Tek sold the printing business to Xerox
in 2001.
Dye-sublimation printers[edit]
Main article: Dye-sublimation printer

A disassembled dye sublimation cartridge.

A dye-sublimation printer (or dye-sub printer) is a printer which
employs a printing process that uses heat to transfer dye to a medium
such as a plastic card, paper or canvas. The process is usually to lay
one colour at a time using a ribbon that has colour panels. Dye-sub
printers are intended primarily for high-quality colour applications,
including colour photography; and are less well-suited for text. While
once the province of high-end print shops, dye-sublimation printers
are now increasingly used as dedicated consumer photo printers.
Thermal printers[edit]
Receipt printer printing a Twitter timeline

Thermal printers work by selectively heating regions of special heat-

sensitive paper. Monochrome thermal printers are used in cash
registers, ATMs, gasoline dispensers and some older inexpensive fax
machines. Colours can be achieved with special papers and different
temperatures and heating rates for different colours; these coloured
sheets are not required in black-and-white output. One example
is Zink (a portmanteau of "zero ink").[5]
Obsolete and special-purpose printing technologies[edit]

Epson MX-80, a popular model of dot-matrix printer in use for many years
The following technologies are either obsolete, or limited to special
applications though most were, at one time, in widespread use.
Impact printers[edit]
Impact printers rely on a forcible impact to transfer ink to the media.
The impact printer uses a print head that either hits the surface of the
ink ribbon, pressing the ink ribbon against the paper (similar to the
action of a typewriter), or, less commonly, hits the back of the paper,
pressing the paper against the ink ribbon (the IBM 1403 for example).
All but the dot matrix printer rely on the use of fully formed
characters, letterforms that represent each of the characters that the
printer was capable of printing. In addition, most of these printers were
limited to monochrome, or sometimes two-color, printing in a single
typeface at one time, although bolding and underlining of text could be
done by "overstriking", that is, printing two or more impressions either
in the same character position or slightly offset. Impact printers
varieties include typewriter-derived printers, teletypewriter-derived
printers, daisywheel printers, dot matrix printers and line printers. Dot
matrix printers remain in common use in businesses where multi-part
forms are printed. An overview of impact printing[6] contains a detailed
description of many of the technologies used.
Typewriter-derived printers[edit]

typeball print element from IBM Selectric-type printer

Main articles: Friden Flexowriter and IBM Selectric typewriter
Several different computer printers were simply computer-controllable
versions of existing electric typewriters. The Friden
Flexowriter and IBM Selectric-based printers were the most-common
examples. The Flexowriter printed with a conventional typebar
mechanism while the Selectric used IBM's well-known "golf ball"
printing mechanism. In either case, the letter form then struck a ribbon
which was pressed against the paper, printing one character at a time.
The maximum speed of the Selectric printer (the faster of the two) was
15.5 characters per second.
Teletypewriter-derived printers[edit]
Main article: Teleprinter
The common teleprinter could easily be interfaced to the computer
and became very popular except for those computers manufactured
by IBM. Some models used a "typebox" that was positioned, in the X-
and Y-axes, by a mechanism and the selected letter form was struck
by a hammer. Others used a type cylinder in a similar way as the
Selectric typewriters used their type ball. In either case, the letter form
then struck a ribbon to print the letterform. Most teleprinters operated
at ten characters per second although a few achieved 15 CPS.
Daisy wheel printers[edit]

"daisy wheel" print element

Main article: Daisy wheel printer

Daisy wheel printers operate in much the same fashion as
a typewriter. A hammer strikes a wheel with petals, the "daisy wheel",
each petal containing a letter form at its tip. The letter form strikes a
ribbon of ink, depositing the ink on the page and thus printing a
character. By rotating the daisy wheel, different characters are
selected for printing. These printers were also referred to as letter-
quality printers because they could produce text which was as clear
and crisp as a typewriter. The fastest letter-quality printers printed at
30 characters per second.
Dot-matrix printers[edit]
Main article: Dot matrix printer

sample output from 9-pin dot matrix printer (one character expanded to show
detail)
The term dot matrix printer is used for impact printers that use a matrix
of small pins to transfer ink to the page.[7] The advantage of dot matrix
over other impact printers is that they can produce graphical images in
addition to text; however the text is generally of poorer quality than
impact printers that use letterforms (type).
Dot-matrix printers can be broadly divided into two major classes:

Ballistic wire printers

Stored energy printers

Dot matrix printers can either be character-based or line-based (that
is, a single horizontal series of pixels across the page), referring to the
configuration of the print head.
In the 1970s & 80s, dot matrix printers were one of the more common
types of printers used for general use, such as for home and small
office use. Such printers normally had either 9 or 24 pins on the print
head (early 7 pin printers also existed, which did not
print descenders). There was a period during the early home
computer era when a range of printers were manufactured under
many brands such as the Commodore VIC-1525 using
the Seikosha Uni-Hammer system. This used a single solenoid with
an oblique striker that would be actuated 7 times for each column of 7
vertical pixels while the head was moving at a constant speed. The
angle of the striker would align the dots vertically even though the
head had moved one dot spacing in the time. The vertical dot position
was controlled by a synchronised longitudinally ribbed platen behind
the paper that rotated rapidly with a rib moving vertically seven dot
spacings in the time it took to print one pixel column. [8][9] 24-pin print
heads were able to print at a higher quality and started to offer
additional type styles and were marketed as Near Letter Quality by
some vendors. Once the price of inkjet printers dropped to the point
where they were competitive with dot matrix printers, dot matrix
printers began to fall out of favour for general use.
Some dot matrix printers, such as the NEC P6300, can be upgraded
to print in colour. This is achieved through the use of a four-colour
ribbon mounted on a mechanism (provided in an upgrade kit that
replaces the standard black ribbon mechanism after installation) that
raises and lowers the ribbons as needed. Colour graphics are
generally printed in four passes at standard resolution, thus slowing
down printing considerably. As a result, colour graphics can take up to
four times longer to print than standard monochrome graphics, or up
to 8-16 times as long at high resolution mode.
Dot matrix printers are still commonly used in low-cost, low-quality
applications such as cash registers, or in demanding, very high
volume applications like invoice printing. Impact printing, unlike laser
printing, allows the pressure of the print head to be applied to a stack
of two or more forms to print multi-part documents such as sales
invoices and credit card receipts using continuous
stationery with carbonless copy paper. Dot-matrix printers were being
superseded even as receipt printers after the end of the twentieth
century.
Line printers[edit]
Main article: Line printer
Line printers print an entire line of text at a time. Four principal designs
exist.

Print drum from drum printer

Drum printers, where a horizontally mounted rotating drum

carries the entire character set of