The Runaway Nail

It made me think of 3 other printers... Seikosha made something they caleld the 'unihammer' mechansim. It hd a rddged ropper behind the paper that was rotated and a thin vertical hammer i nthe carriage. When a solenoid was energisided the hammer hit the ribbon/paper and a dot was printed at the intersection of the hammer and a ridge i nthe roller.Used by at least Radio Shack (DMP110) and Amstraf Olivetti made a very odd spark printer, JP101 or soemthign similar. The print cartridge was a glass tube containing a condcutive ink. A high votlage was applied between this and an electrode just in front of the paper. The resutlign spark took some of the ink onto the paper. Print quality was terrible, the otuptu would smudge if you touched it, and settign up the electrodes, etc is a pain (don't ask). And then the HP7245. A thermal printer/plotter/ This thing has a 13 element themal dot matrix printer head. In 'printer' mode, 12 of the elements are used ina soemaht noraml way. I say somewaht nroaml as they lie in a diagonal line so that you can pritn text across the paper or up and down the apper. In 'plotter' mode, the 13th element (only) is used. It works like a plotter pen. The paper rolls abck and forth, the carriage moves back and forth and it plots. Of course it can plot test too. -tony