Inkjet History

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(From: John Nagle (nagle@netcom.com).)

The original ink jet printer of this type was the Teletype Inktronic, which introduced the concept of video-type distortions to printing. It appeared around 1970, and was so bad nobody tried again for years.

(From: Tony Hardman (AHED_CIJ@f54x19.demon.co.uk).)

I guess that is why it was used in industrial applications I guess. Were the 'video-type distortions' a deliberate feature or just a coincidence of how they turned out?

Who are/were Inktronic???(apologies to anyone connected with them) I guess that may have been spin off development from some work contracted out by IBM, but it was so....?? (costly/low res/unreliable - choose one) they lost interest. Although one of the very early machines still runs well on a textile mill. It had a large number of jets side by side, and may be multi color too. I've only seen the patents so don't know exactly what it looks like.

I thought original ink jet printer was a chart recorder developed in the last century. It was just a nozzle on deflection mechanism, and was not modulated so it was always printing. It was a lighter mechanism than actually trying to move a pen and so had some performance advantages over other technology available at the time...

The same reason CIJ still sells world wide, even when high resolution DOD is biting at its heals.

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