13 Jun
1997
13 Jun
'97
9:39 a.m.
While Isaac Davis wrote:
Wait a minute, it was an Olivetti, but I can't remember the
> model. The coolest part was turning the lights
off when it was printing and
> watching the sparks fly across the paper as it printed. That's a printer I
> would like to have again.
At 21:28 12/06/97 -0600, Jeff wrote:
Y' know, I seems to me that some of these
'sparky' dot matrix
printers used aluminized "thermal" paper.
No Jeff, this Olivetti "sparkling" system was different and was not using
thermal-conductive (=aluminium) paper (at least the one I know); was a real
DRY INK JET.
The "bullet-shaped" cartridge was containing the DRY INK (a sort of TONER)
and a high-voltage electric field was made between the rubber(but conductive)
roll, and the head. In this way the particles of positive electrically
charged toner is "aimed" to go against the negative charged roll, but in
between there is the paper (common paper), so the electricity pass, but ink
stay.
I used to have a stack of
old machine runs on such paper, and I remember certain cheesy
cash-registers using the same kind of paper tape (about 1981 or so .
also this DRY system was widely used by Olivetti on desktop financial
calculator (I have one working) and cash-registers
I think that the system was good for those applications (fast,quite
silent,working on common paper instead thermal and..yes,cool in the dark)
but the problem was the powder spread all around the printing bay of the
machine, so when bubble jet came out...
Sorry for my instinctive and not-checked english.
Ciao
Riccardo
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