On Oct 13,
2015, at 12:13 PM, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote:
On Oct 12, 2015, at 23:42, Ethan Dicks
<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 11:32 PM, Nigel Williams
<nw at retrocomputingtasmania.com> wrote:
Has anyone ever seen one? I had an idea it used a
silvered-paper and
burned it off? or am I mis-remembering.
I used one in the early 1980s but I never
had to repair it. It was,
as Tony and others have mentioned, electrolytic, not thermal. I don't
know the details of the process either, but I remember the wet wick
and having to wait for the paper to dry.
I wonder if the wet-paper printer that
you remember used a similar process to the one that my folks' liquid toner photocopier
did back in the 80s? It used an electrostatic toner adhesion process followed by a fuser.
Just like contemporary laser printers and photocopiers, but with the toner particles
suspended in a liquid carrier. The volatile carrier smelled awful, and the finished copies
had a fingernails-on-chalkboard like gritty feel in the hands. I seem to recall that it
needed specially prepared paper.
That sounds correct. Versatec made printers that
used that process, I used one (attached to the CDC 6500 at U of Illinois PLATO). Very
nice for continuous roll full bitmap graphics.
paul