Honeywell Page Printing System

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Honeywell Page Printing System
Honeywell PPS Printer.jpg
Honeywell PPS
Introduced1974

The Honeywell Page Printing System (PPS) announced in 1974, is notable because it was the first commercially successful high speed non-impact printer. [1] It could produce output at up to 18,000 lines per minute, [2] where the earlier Xerox 1200 (the first commercially available electro-static printer) ran at 4000 lines per minute [3] and the contemporary IBM 3211 (which was an impact printer), ran at 2000 lines per minute. [4] Most printer history has focused on the later IBM 3800 [5] and the Xerox 9700. [6]

Contents

Development

The PPS was designed by Honeywell Information Systems (HIS) in Oklahoma City. Development began in 1967, under a team led by Ronald F Borelli. Their initial goal was to exceed 5,000 lines per minute and after six years of development, they shipped their first pre-production unit to Lawrence Livermore Lab in 1973. It was able to run at 18,000 lines per minute. [7]

Honeywell had three primary goals with the PPS: [8]

Product design

The PPS consisted of four major subsystems:

  1. Magnetic Tape Subsystem This could read industry standard 1/2 inch magnetic tape in a read only fashion. It could read 7 or 9 track tape written at up to 1600 bits per inch.
  2. Processor Subsystem: It used a 16 bit processor with 775 nanosecond memory based on the Honeywell System 700 minicomputer.
  3. Console Subsystem: This was a system console used to manage the entire system.
  4. Page Printing Subsystem: This consisted of two cabinets. In the first cabinet, called the basic cabinet, was the printing engine. There was a format drum which could print a fixed image onto each page (which they claimed eliminated the need for pre-printed forms), a print head matrix, a toning station (with one colour), a paper transport drive and a sheet cutter. In the second cabinet there were 8 pockets to stack the cut output, holding up to 800 sheets of printed output in variable sizes. Stacker management software allowed control over how the output was stacked or collated. Later Honeywell offered 16, then 24 and then 32 stackers per PPS. [9] [10]

Honeywell claimed that the PPS had two unique systems:

  1. The electrode printhead. The printhead used a printed circuit design with 38 micron thick electrodes that created a latent image using electrostatic charge on the dielectric paper. There were 2112 styli in two rows of 1056 each. The print head was 268.2 mm wide allowing 132 character lines. It offered only one 96 character font known as the Honeywell Optimized Font that could be printed in two sizes. Smaller characters were 16 X 18 dots and larger characters that were 20 X 22 dots. It was effectively capable of printing 200 dots per inch.
  2. The liquid toning system. After creating the latent image, liquid toner using positively charged pigment particles suspended in an insulated hydrocarbon liquid that was transferred to the paper surface using a transfer roll. The toner was fixed to the paper with a heated platen and blower system.

The PPS speed was optionally either 8,000, 12,000 or 18,000 lines per minute (90,140 or 210 pages per minute). [11] [7] The speed could be increased as a purchased upgrade. It used a large roll of special dielectric paper, which was 3800 feet in length. The paper roll consisted of conductive base paper coated with a thin payer of dielectric material. After printing it was cut to one of 14 desired sheet sizes and then stacked. The printer was able to pre-print the page (adding a logo or a background form) prior to printing the variable data by using a custom engraved magnesium cylinder [12] also called a forms roll. This avoided the need to use pre-printed forms. [8]

Models

There were three Models: I, II, II/E. [13]

The Model II was announced in June 1979. [14] The model II is described as having the following: [15]

The Model II/E was announced by Ron Borelli before or during May 1981. The major change appears to have been around options to increase the CPU, memory and hard drive space of the Level 6 Microcomputer. This offered new software options such as allowing users to queue print jobs. [17]

There are references to a model III in at least two sources. [13] [18] A 1980 Computerworld Magazine suggested that Honeywell planned to add duplex printing by 1983. [19]

Example customers

While limited shipments occurred between 1973 and 1976, sales began in earnest in 1976 when a dedicated sales force was established. The PPS Operation was run as a separate company within the Honeywell Corporation with its own manufacturing, research and development and marketing teams with 75 marketing (sales) personnel. [20] In February 1979 they reported there were 150 PPSs installed, [20] and in June 1979 they claimed to have sold and installed 250 systems. [7] They claimed typical users produced between 1.2 and 1.5 million pages of output per month. [7] Honeywell advertising suggested the printer was cost effective at 400,000 pages per month and could potentially print up to four million pages per month. [21]

An IDC report in 1980 found that while the PPS was cheaper than the IBM 3800 or Xerox 9700, the cost of the special paper needed by the PPS was significantly higher at 0.0068 cents per sheet versus 0.0043 cents per sheet for plain paper.

Sample customer included:

Replacement product

Honeywell and the Bull group began a business relationship in 1974, which resulted in Honeywell-Bull being created in 1976. By 1988 Honeywell Bull was consolidated into group Bull and in 1989, renamed to Bull, a WorldWide Information Systems company, at which time Honeywell Information Systems effectively ceased to exist. [25] In 1988 Bull released the 4000 series, that had a similar physical layout to the PPS, using roll paper and a DPS/6 Control Unit (the renamed Level 6 [26] ). However it also had three major differences: [27]

Bull Printing Systems was sold to Delphax for an undisclosed sum at the end of 1991. At that time it was earning $20million USD revenue per year. [28]

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References

  1. ↑ "The U.S. Computer Printer Industry". ed-thelen.org. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  2. 1 2 "Honeywell Page Printing System (PPS)". 5 August 2010.
  3. ↑ "Flashback Friday: The Xerox 1200 Computer Printing System". 28 September 2012.
  4. ↑ IBM 3211 Printer and 3811 Control Unit Component Description (PDF). IBM. 1970. p. 5.
  5. ↑ "The History of the Laser Printer". 25 June 2015.
  6. ↑ "Laser Printers".
  7. 1 2 3 4 Infosystems 1979-06: Vol 26 Iss 6. Reed Business Information. 1979.
  8. 1 2 "A Nonimpact Page Printing System | Borelli, R.F.; Bayless, R.B.; Truax, E.R. | download". ur.booksc.eu. Retrieved 2021-12-01.
  9. 1 2 Computerworld. International Data Group. 1976-08-30.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  10. ↑ Cassel, Don (1980). Introduction to computers and information processing. Reston, Va.: Reston Pub. Co. ISBN   978-0-8359-3151-9.
  11. ↑ Printing Trades Journal 1977-11: Iss 1089. Benn Publications Ltd. 1977.
  12. ↑ Computerworld the NewsWeekly for the Computer Community 1980-02-25: Vol 14 Iss 8. Computerworld. 1980-02-25.
  13. 1 2 MIS Week 1986-12-15: Vol 7 Iss 50. Conde Nast Publications Inc. 1986-12-15. p. 47.
  14. ↑ Computerworld 1979-06-04: Vol 13 Iss 23. Computerworld. 1979-06-04.
  15. ↑ "Honeywell PPS II" (PDF). www.1000bit.it. Retrieved 2021-12-05.
  16. ↑ Computerworld the NewsWeekly for the Computer Community 1982-05-10: Vol 16 Iss 19. Computerworld. 1982-05-10.
  17. ↑ Computerworld. International Data Group. Archive.org. 1981-05-11. p. 96.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  18. ↑ Computerworld 1990-11-12: Vol 24 Iss 46. Computerworld. 1990-11-12. p. 154.
  19. ↑ Computerworld the NewsWeekly for the Computer Community 1980-02-25: Vol 14 Iss 8. Computerworld. 1980-02-25.
  20. 1 2 Computerworld 1979-02-19: Vol 13 Iss 8. Computerworld. 1979-02-19. p. 66.
  21. ↑ Computerworld. International Data Group. 1978.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  22. ↑ Computerworld. International Data Group. 1981-01-19.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  23. ↑ NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) (1980-05-01). NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 19800022383: Cogeneration Technology Alternatives Study (CTAS). Volume 6: Computer data. Part 1: Coal-fired nocogeneration process boiler, section A.
  24. ↑ Defense Technical Information Center (1996-03-01). DTIC ADA306284: Department of Army FY 1997 Budget Estimate Submitted to Congress March 1996. Defense Business Operations Fund.
  25. ↑ "A strong new name in global computing" (PDF). www.1000bit.it. Retrieved 2021-12-11.
  26. ↑ "Honeywell". www.feb-patrimoine.com. Archived from the original on 2014-06-27. Retrieved 2021-12-11.
  27. ↑ "4000 Series".
  28. ↑ Name (1991-11-26). "DELPHAX BUYS BULL HN's HIGH-SPEED PAGE PRINTER BUSINESS". Tech Monitor. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
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