 | |
| Introduced | 1977 |
|---|---|
| Type | Laser printer |
| DPI | 300x300 |
| Speed | 120ppm |
The Xerox 9700 was a high-end laser printer manufactured by Xerox Corporation beginning in 1977. [1] Based on the Xerox 9200 copier, the 9700 printed at 300 dots-per-inch on cut-sheet paper at up to two pages per second (pps), one- or two-sided, that is simplex or duplex, landscape or portrait.
The 9700 was intended for high-volume applications. It included a disk drive and a modified Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11/34 [2] as a print controller and rasterizer. It could connect to an IBM mainframe via a parallel channel. It offered an input tray that could hold up to 2500 sheets of paper (20lb bond/75gsm) and an auxiliary input tray for an additional 400 sheets. It had two output stackers, each capable of holding 1500 sheets. An operator control console consisted of a CRT display terminal and keyboard. It optionally included a 9-track tape drive which could be used to load documents for printing, to supply software and bitmapped fonts, or run backups. [3]
The 9700 had separate imaging units for each side of the paper, which allowed it to print simplex or duplex with no decrease in speed.
The Xerox 9700 played a part in the beginning of the Free Software movement: In 1980, Richard Stallman and some other hackers at the MIT AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's Xerox Graphics Printer, a xerographic experimental raster printer, [4] so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use, thus the launch of the Free Software movement. [5]
In computing, a printer is a peripheral machine which makes a persistent representation of graphics or text, usually on paper. While most output is human-readable, bar code printers are an example of an expanded use for printers. Different types of printers include 3D printers, inkjet printers, laser printers, and thermal printers.
Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture. In a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations. Despite being modest in number Lisp machines commercially pioneered many now-commonplace technologies, including effective garbage collection, laser printing, windowing systems, computer mice, high-resolution bit-mapped raster graphics, computer graphic rendering, and networking innovations such as Chaosnet. Several firms built and sold Lisp machines in the 1980s: Symbolics, Lisp Machines Incorporated, Texas Instruments, and Xerox. The operating systems were written in Lisp Machine Lisp, Interlisp (Xerox), and later partly in Common Lisp.
PostScript is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it can be used for many other purposes as well. PostScript was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Brotz, Ed Taft and Bill Paxton from 1982 to 1984. The most recent version, PostScript 3, was released in 1997.
In digital printing, a page description language (PDL) is a computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap. An overlapping term is printer control language, which includes Hewlett-Packard's Printer Command Language (PCL). PostScript is one of the most noted page description languages. The markup language adaptation of the PDL is the page description markup language.
In computer graphics and digital photography, a raster graphic represents a two-dimensional picture as a rectangular matrix or grid of pixels, viewable via a computer display, paper, or other display medium. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel. Raster images are stored in image files with varying dissemination, production, generation, and acquisition formats.
A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing system which produces a raster image also known as a bitmap. Such a bitmap is used by a later stage of the printing system to produce the printed output. The input may be a page description in a high-level page description language such as PostScript, PDF, or XPS. The input can also be or include bitmaps of higher or lower resolution than the output device, which the RIP resizes using an image scaling algorithm.
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively charged cylinder called a "drum" to define a differentially charged image. The drum then selectively collects electrically charged powdered ink (toner), and transfers the image to paper, which is then heated to permanently fuse the text, imagery, or both, to the paper. As with digital photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process. Laser printing differs from traditional xerography as implemented in analog photocopiers in that in the latter, the image is formed by reflecting light off an existing document onto the exposed drum.
A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and printers. The system is also used in textiles with sewing, knitting and weaving.
Daisy wheel printing is an impact printing technology invented in 1970 by Andrew Gabor at Diablo Data Systems. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to premium typewriters such as the IBM Selectric, but two to three times faster. Daisy wheel printing was used in electronic typewriters, word processors and computers from 1972. The daisy wheel is so named because of its resemblance to the daisy flower.
An MFP, multi-functional, all-in-one (AIO), or multi-function device (MFD), is an office machine which incorporates the functionality of multiple devices in one, so as to have a smaller footprint in a home or small business setting, or to provide centralized document management/distribution/production in a large-office setting. A typical MFP may act as a combination of some or all of the following devices: email, fax, photocopier, printer, scanner.
Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) is a time-sharing operating system developed principally by the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, with help from Project MAC. The name is the jocular complement of the MIT Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS).
LaserJet as a brand name identifies the line of laser printers marketed by the American computer company Hewlett-Packard (HP). The HP LaserJet was the world's first commercially successful laser printer. Canon supplies both mechanisms and cartridges for most HP laser printers; some larger A3 models use Samsung print engines.
Richard Matthew Stallman, also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software that ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.
Duplex printing is a feature of some computer printers and multi-function printers (MFPs) that allows the printing of a sheet of paper on both sides automatically. Print devices without this capability can only print on a single side of paper, sometimes called single-sided printing or simplex printing.
A service bureau is a company that provides business services for a fee. The term has been extensively used to describe technology-based services to financial services companies, particularly banks. Service bureaus are a significant sector within the growing 3D printing industry that allow customers to make a decision whether to buy their own equipment or outsource production. Customers of service bureaus typically do not have the scale or expertise to incorporate these services into their internal operations and prefer to outsource them to a service bureau. Outsourced payroll services constitute a commonly provisioned service from a service bureau.
DocuTech is the name given to a line of electronic production-publishing systems produced by Xerox Corporation. It allowed paper documents to be scanned, electronically edited, and then printed on demand. DocuTech systems were the last known to use the XNS protocol for networking.
The IBM 3800 is a discontinued laser printer designed and manufactured by IBM. It was the first commercially available laser printer. It was a continuous form laser printer, meaning that it printed onto a continuous long sheet of paper.
The Honeywell Page Printing System (PPS) announced in 1974, is notable because it was the first commercially successful high speed non-impact printer. It could produce output at up to 18,000 lines per minute, where the earlier Xerox 1200 ran at 4000 lines per minute and the contemporary IBM 3211, ran at 2000 lines per minute. Most printer history has focused on the later IBM 3800 and the Xerox 9700.
The Xerox 1200 Computer Printing System is a computer printer system that was developed by Xerox. It was the first commercial non-impact Xerographic printer used to create computer output. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a laser printer, but it did not in fact have a laser.
The Xerox 2700 is a discontinued monochrome laser printer from Xerox Corporation. The 2700 was announced in March, 1982, and can print up to 12 pages per minute (PPM), one-sided, on standard A4 or Letter cut-sheet paper. It occupies 5 square feet (0.46 m2) of floor space, and cost $18,995. The 2700 is rated for a print volume of 15,000 pages per month, although some users got up to 100,000 pages.
In the meantime, various people at Xerox were building a series of experimental raster printers. The first of these was called XGP, the Xerox Graphics Printer, and had a resolution of 192 dots to the inch. Xerox made XGP's available to certain universities, and by 1972 they were in use at Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and the University of Toronto. Each of those organizations produced its own hardware and software interfaces. The XGP is historically interesting only because it is the first raster printer to gain substantial use by computer scientists, and was the arena in which a lot of mistakes were made and a lot of lessons learned.
