27 Oct
2003
27 Oct
'03
10:41 p.m.
All the main manufacturers in "the good old days" had top of the line impact
printers of about 1200 lpm +/- a bit. The ICL (then ICT) 1905 when I started
work had an Analex 1200 lpm drum printer - and this got transferred to a
PDP-11/20 (courtesy of some clever work by our chief engineer) when the 1905
was replaced by a 1905E. The ICL 1905E had a model 1933 (ICL number - don't
know who made it really) printer that was of similar spec. ISTR that in the
same era the top IBM printer was a train printer that worked at 1100 lpm
with a 64-character set or 1400 with a 48. Cannot remember what printers we
had when we moved onto the Honeywell - think they were a pair of 1200 lpm
train printers (by then we wanted a 96-character set)
I don't think there were faster impact* printers available - most
non-university sites preferred to go for multiple printers as a 1200 lpm
device got through paper _fast_ and kept operators busy reloading.
* we heard stories of the big mail-order companies having extremely fast
(and extremely large!) printers from Xerox that not-infrequently caught fire
if they had a paper jam, but were still cost-effective because of the speed
when they _were_ working. Loading the paper on these devices aparrently
required mechanical assistance as the roll (not box) was so heavy.
Andy
I'm trying to find out what was the fastest drum
printer.
My belief is it was a model made by Burroughs where in times
long ago i had a great time, ah still can remember knowing
the status of a job by the squeal of the 5500's power supplies,
sorry i slipped into memory.
If I remember there was a printer, that in 1975 was considered
old, but it was either 1,100 or 1,400 LPM with at Uppercase drum.
I also remember the printer controller being about the same
size as the printer.