An overview of impact printing
This paper gives an overview of impact printing and reviews some of the more recent advances made in this printing technology. Matrix and fully-formed-character impact-printing technologies are discussed for both serial printers and line printers. The critical electromechanical subassemblies that are described are the hammer unit, the paper-handling system, the inking system, and the type-element system. The mathematics describing printer performance and the operation of some of the subassemblies are presented. The relative simplicity of the impact printer still allows it to be the most economical form of text printing. Its other advantages are reliability, general insensitivity to environment, and the ability to print on the greatest variety of print media.
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education Courses of Cartography
The rapid development of information technology affected cartography considerably in the last three to four decades of the twentieth century. In higher education curriculums the reproduction process was thought as a totally independent subject or a part of other related subjects. Cartographers should know the whole technical process to be sure that the maps will be reproduced as they were planned. As digital output devices become wide-spread and higher education institutes could afford these devices in the first phase the course about map reproduction was complemented by digital methods and the necessary theoretical information about the process was also added. In the second phase when the output device becomes easily available for even home users the traditional offset printing method has seemingly lost its importance and students were more interesting in digital printing methods. Nowadays one of the most important output devices in cartography is the screen of the computer, mobile phone, PDA which again made us to make changes in the curriculum and emphasize the importance of these new “output devices”.
Impact Line Printing: Improvement of a Proven Technology
Impact line printers have become the most important peripheral devices for generating readable output from digital computer information.