History
Laser Printers
The laser printer concept was developed by Xerox in in 1969. The first commercially available laser printer was released by IBM in 1975. The IBM product was designed for high volume commercial use. It was extremely large and suited for the offices.
The first laser printer suited to the office is considered to be the Xerox Star, which was released in 1981. However, this printer was expensive and sales were limited due to its price.
In 1984, the HP Laserjet was released. It is considered to be first laser printer for the mass market. The speed and quality of laser printers have improved significantly since then.
Inkjet Printers
Inkjet printers for consumers were first introduced 1980s. IBM developed the continuous inkjet printers which are used in some industrial printing but did not take hold in the home printer market.
The drop-on-demand inkjet printer was invented by Siemens in 1977. These are slower but more cost efficient. Printing is achieved by emission of drops of ink from printer head on to the page as needed. This technology has been used by companies such as HP and Canon. Ink is contained in a replaceable cartridge.
Ink cartridges have changed dramatically over the past several decades along with printing technology, which has become faster, reliable, cheaper and cleaner and more convenient.
In the early 1980’s, the ink delivery systems were far less dependable than they are today. They were based on the dot matrix method and daisy wheels which involved changing ribbons. Printing was made using an ink soaked cloth ribbon very similar to that of a typewriter. They were the most common personal printers used until the 1990’s. They were messy, slow, inefficient and expensive.
Today, the inkjet method is widely used at home for printing various size documents in both black/white and color. Home printers are usually ink jet while laser printers dominate the business environment.
Continuous inkjet printers were developed by IBM, and use electrically-charged droplets to coat the page with ink very quickly but also waste a lot of ink. This technology never gained wide popularity with consumers, but is used today in industrial settings, for labeling cartons and addressing direct mail. The more popular design among consumers is the drop-on-demand inkjet printer, invented by Siemens in 1977. These printers, which spray ink only where needed, are slower than continuous inkjet printers but less expensive. Most drop-on-demand printers, including those made by HP, Canon, and Lexmark, use thermal technology to push the drops of ink out of the print head; Epson uses its own technology, called piezo-electric, to achieve the same effect. The inkjet printer has come a long way since it became available almost twenty years ago and prices now are only a fraction of the original prices. For example, Hewlett Packard’s DeskJet printer (one of the first released) was priced at $1,000 in 198