Tony Duell wrote:
Dave McGuire
wrote:
For bonus points: heat and light make it fade quicker. Leave a
thermal-print receipt on a windowsill on the 1st of the month and it'll
be blank by the end of the month. Leave it on or near a radiator and
it'll go completely black within a few minutes.
It's not generally realsied that themral printouts fade with time. I was
chatting to somebody from a major museum and he didn't realise the
historically-significant calculator printouts needed to be copied _NOW_.
There are also significant chemical compatibility
issues. Most notably,
applying a strip of Sellotape to a thermal-printed slip/receipt causes
Pehaps I've been lucky,but I've not had any prolems sticking down HP
calculator printouts with 3M 'magic tape' onto a piece of plain paper to
make them easier to copy.
I thought the fading issue was quite commonly realised, esp. if you're the type
that hangs on to receipts.
On the other hand, I have dozens of printouts from high school in 1976, from
the printer for a HP9830 computer/calculator, taped to sheets and bound in a
folder, all of which are completely legible, very slight fading, except for
some corners under 3M tape which have faded completely.