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Comment by zxcvbn4038 | Hacker News Reader

My son has never seen a typewriter in person or a printer that wasn’t inkjet or laser, I think he is missing out.

Didn’t IBM make printers that also used the selectric balls? That would be a great novelty item to have. No idea if you can still buy tractor feed paper someplace to use it.

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There were printers that used seectric balls and also printers that used daisy-wheels. Early dot-matrix printers had large dots and only so-so precision for placing them so they were not "letter quality" if you see an old dot-matrix labled "NLQ" that's "near letter quality" and was accomplished by using overlapping dot-strikes to significantly improve the quality.

You could still tell it was printed on a dot-matrix though; I had one that was 360x180dpi and from a distance it looked fine, but up-close you could tell it was dot-matrix. The ability to print multiple fonts without stopping for far cheaper than a laser printer was nice though.

>"NLQ" that's "near letter quality" and was accomplished by using overlapping dot-strikes to significantly improve the quality.0

We had a panasonic printer that had the NLQ switch. It worked, but would print each line twice (with a slight offset on the overlap). It was pretty good but really 1/2 the speed.

Goofy story that is unrelated to anything.

UT Austin CS dept. used Apple LaserWriters as department printers for years. IIRC, they were 300x300dpi. Then one day, we upgraded to 600x600dpi laser printers (I forget the brand). I was on staff at the time, and I didn't know it was going to happen.

The next day, E. Allan Emerson, professor and Turing Award winner, showed up at the door of the software staff's cave, very upset. His papers were looking very different even though they were formatted in LaTeX which claims to always produce the same output. (LaTeX was doing its job, BTW; the spacing was identical.)

It turns out that Computer Modern Roman at 300x300 is a pretty reasonable font. At 600x600, it is a thin, spindly looking thing.

I think we dredged up a spare LaserWriter and put it in his office for him.

There was a kind of printer that used a ball and could only print letters and symbols on the ball.

Faster than dot matrix for many things.

Amazon sells continuous feed paper.

Recently saw continuous feed paper piling out behind the gate agent at an airport, I wouldn't have guessed it was still in use because it'd been years since I saw any, but now I'm assuming they go through a lot of it

I've seen it in some places still, it's one way to log things and guarantee that it hasn't been messed with (because you can't replace a piece of paper in the middle of the feed).

Thermal printers on a roll serve a similar purpose sometimes, but thermal paper has issues, too.

It's more about the fact that dot matrix / impact printers can print on duplicate/triplicate paper. There is carbon in the paper that leaves a mark on the layer underneath it.

You can't do that with a laser or inkjet printer unless you request multiple copies, and then you can't be sure all copies get made.

Carbon forms are still a huge thing in shipping and logistics industries.

The problem we have with using lasers at work is that they take a few minutes to warm up, and if you're trying to get a fire appliance out the door in under 60 seconds you can't wait for them.

And absolutely no-one has time to run out and get a yellow ink cartridge for an inkjet. Fuck you Epson, you used to be cool.

I'd say that we could use blockchain for this, but then where would we print the hash updates?

We use continuous feed paper - either fan-fold or roll - in the Oki 9-pin dot matrix "turnout printers" in fire stations.

There really isn't a replacement for them, so you can still buy them new.

"Time-to-print" on receipt printers can be quite fast, but again, the thermal paper would have an obvious issue if used for thermal events ;)

(I love the POS acronym - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMgtywYSknk )

The fastest printers from the era prior to laser printers were line printers. I used to work as a field engineer maintaining and repairing these and they could be quite intimidating devices. The fastest I worked on could print ~1500 lines per minute at a large NCR site. The first thing you'd do was remove your tie and apply ear plugs before starting work on these beasts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_printer

Here's one in action: https://youtu.be/KnPBWru2Ecg?t=417

lp0: printer on fire.

the noise it makes when going to "ready" makes you realize why things had an 'online/ready' state

buy one today! https://printronixplus.com lol

Anyone old enough to still remember the opening of UFO episodes (1970)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdI-F4-7jM

SHADO

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ......

ALIEN DEFENCE ORGANIZATION ...

SECRET LOCATION .... BENEATH FILM STUDIO

> My son has never seen a typewriter in person or a printer that wasn’t inkjet or laser, I think he is missing out.

Next time you fly, stay close to the boarding gate when they print the manifest and there's a good chance you'll hear a glorious dot matrix printer in action.

> Didn’t IBM make printers that also used the selectric balls?

There was the IBM 2741.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2741

It is based on what IBM called the "I/O typewriter", which was a Selectric variant with switches and solenoids. Pretty cool stuff.

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