What is a printer? How the printer works.
A printer is a peripheral device. Which prints (usually) on human comprehensible graphs, pictures, words, written paper. The two most common printers are white-black and color. Papers and documents are printed with black and white laser printers. And with color ink jet printers, high and photo equivalent results are obtained.
The world's first computer printer was the device for the difference engine invented by Charles Babbage in the 19th century. [1] This is how printing was done. The first commercial printers, such as electric typewriters and teletype machines, worked in this way. The demand for high-speed printing led to the invention of new methods, especially for use with computers. Widely used devices in the 1980s, such as the daisy wheel system, were similar to typewriters. The line printer gave the same type of output but at a slightly faster speed. The dot matrix method was used to print text and graphs or pictures together, but with low quality. Plotters were used for high quality graphics like blueprints.
The first low-cost HP laserjet laser printer in 1984 revolutionized desktop printing with Apple's PostScript laser writer the following year.
The rapid spread and widespread use of Internet email during the 1990s and 2000s diminished the need for printing. Another reason to reduce the need for printed writing on paper is due to the different types of portable storage systems. Even ebook readers or tablets are now used on paper-printed texts that used to be read offline (not on the Internet), such as air travel or public transport. Nowadays printers are used for special purposes such as printing pictures or works of art. Printers are no longer used as essential peripherals as before.
Since 2010, there has been widespread interest in 3rd dimensional printing so that replicas of real objects can be printed as an invoice was printed on a previous laser printer.
#Types of printers
Personal printers are designed for single-person use that may only be used on one computer. These require very little hassle to print a paper. No experience is required to install the printer. These are designed for low volume printing and low capacity printing work. So these are usually done at low speeds such as 6 to about 25 pages per minute and cost per page. There are some printers that can print from memory cards or digital cameras or scanners.
Network or distributed printers are designed for high volume and high speed. These are usually used by many people on the same network and print speeds range from 45 to 100 pages per minute. [2] The Xerox 9700 can print up to 120 pages per minute.
A virtual printer is a printer that behaves like a real printer but is actually software. A 3D printer is a device that can create third-dimensional objects from 3D models or other sources.