13 Oct
2015
13 Oct
'15
8:59 a.m.
I had a little Comprint printer in the 1970s/1980s that used something
sort of like this. The paper was aluminum coated, thus conductive. The
head was a high voltage electrode unit that burned away the aluminum
layer. (I can't imagine any kind of deposition technology in that
era...). The head flew back and forth really fast, doing one pixel-line
at a time.
That is how the Sinclair ZX printer works and also things like the Axiom
EX820. Spark (about 80-100V IIRC) to aluminium-coated paper.
The VT52 printer is not like that. The raw paper looks like paper (slightly
yellow, but that might just be age), it is not metal-coated.
Another odd one is the Olivetti JP101 Sparkjet which drew a spark (a few
hundred volts?) from a carbon electrode to a fixed metal one and in the
process got some of the carbon flying across the gap and landing on the
paper just above the metal electrode. The result was poor quality output
that smudged if you looked at it wrongly...
-tony