Laser printers seem almost mundane today – affordable, fast and reliable for small offices. But this revolutionary technology has an epic origin story spanning over 50 years of cutting-edge engineering and tinkering!
Let me walk you through the tale of how we went from crude 1960s prototypes to the versatile color lasers of today that underpin modern desktop publishing empires…
The Promise of Laser Printing
Our story begins in 1969 when a mild-mannered Xerox researcher named Gary Starkweather had an outrageous idea. What if you could "draw" images onto paper using precise lasers and mirrors? This marked the first glimmer of the laser printing concept [1].
After years of clever hacking, Gary finally printed the first page off his homemade prototype laser printer in 1971. The output was only black and white with low resolutions. But it proved the promise of directly "writing" onto paper using light [2]!
Gary knew he was onto something big. Let‘s see how his crazy theory shaped the next 50 years of printing evolution.
The Beasts of High-Volume Printing
While Gary toiled away, businesses relied on hulking mainframe printers built for data centers. These workhorses printed boilerplate text onto continuous stationary paper without formatting. 3000 lines per minute was considered "high-speed" then!
The first commercial laser printer – IBM‘s 3800 model – arrived in 1976 to replace such line printers. It output a blistering 215 pages per minute with custom fonts onto cut sheets [3]. But resolutions reached only 240 dots per inch (dpi) – unsuitable for intricate graphics.
| Printer Model | Year | Speed | Resolution | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM 3800 | 1976 | 215 ppm | 240 dpi | Mainframe line printer replacement |
| Xerox 9700 | 1977 | 120 ppm | 240 dpi | First custom fonts and graphics |
Xerox quickly followed up with the 9700 model in 1977 targeting the workgroup market [4]. This revolutionary system let offices use predefined fonts, mix text and graphics, print booklets and manipulate page layouts. Such capabilities we take for granted today were mind-blowing concepts back then!
Both models remained expensive niche systems for large companies and data centers though. The promise of laser printing still needed cheaper and more versatile machines to unlock its full potential.
Birth of the Desktop Laser Era
The real gamechanger that brought laser tech to the masses arrived in 1984 – the legendary HP LaserJet! Priced under $3500, it was the first personal laser printer for small businesses [5].
HP contracted Canon to custom-build a compact laser engine using cuts sheets. They added proprietary software and drivers to produce a polished plug-and-play system that finally delivered:
- Affordable desktop footprint
- Reliable office-strength performance
- Crisp 300×300 dpi resolution
- 8 pages per minute speeds
This winning combination sparked fierce competition driving prices lower through the late 80s. IBM, Brother and other makers released cheaper models targeting workgroups. Now even small offices could adopt lasers for everyday printing needs!
But the LaserJet‘s full disruptive impact emerged in 1985 when combined with Apple‘s Macintosh computers and Aldus‘ PageMaker software. This trio leveraged Adobe‘s new PostScript language for easy desktop publishing [6].
Empowered home users could suddenly design newsletters, brochures and marketing collateral with ease! The LaserWriter became a runaway hit as the DTP revolution took over offices. Churning quality prints at an affordable cost finally fulfilled the promise seen in Gary‘s earliest laser printer prototypes.
Let‘s see how this technology then kept shouldering ahead year-after-year…
Maturing Bit By Bit: The 1990s Boom
Early laser printers were finicky beasts needing expert care. But prices kept falling as reliability improved through the 90s boom.
Ink and toner cartridges lasted longer between changes. Fusers heated up quicker while input trays held more paper. We progressed from 8 ppm to over 12 pages per minute. Print quality jumped from 300 dpi to much crisper 600×600 resolution.
| Specification | 1984 HP LaserJet | 1998 Canon LBP 460 |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | 8 ppm | 12 ppm |
| Resolution | 300 × 300 dpi | 600 × 600 dpi |
| Pages per cartridge | 2000 | 3000 |
This allowed businesses to print letterheads, handouts, manuals and contracts affordably in-house rather than at copying shops. Home users also bought personal lasers to publish school projects and crafts at reasonable quality.
The 90s saw laser printers standardizing common connectivity and software protocols. USB and network ports let workgroups share these workhorses easily without needing print servers. PostScript and PCL languages became universal across different printer brands.
Such common foundations fueled the exponential growth of desktop publishing for business users. But it was the arrival of color laser in 2000 that truly transformed capabilities…
The Dawn of Color Laser Printing
Color laser technology faced steep technical hurdles requiring 4 times the complexity of monochrome engines. But by 2000, the first enterprise color lasers finally delivered vibrant outputs — albeit at lower 6-8 ppm speeds.
These pioneering products cost over $6000 targeting marketing teams and design firms. But color laser printers continually improved while shedding prices over the next decade.
By 2010, business color lasers breached the 12 ppm threshold with up to 9600×600 resolution rivaling offset printing press quality. Even the sub-$1000 home color lasers could handle the occasional school project or party invite.
But whether monochrome or color, all modern laser printers build on the same elegant electrostatic process masterminded by Gary Starkweather fifty years ago. Let‘s peek under the hood to see how this ingenious tech works its magic…
Inside the Laser Printer Magic Factory
A laser printer is effectively a mini manufacturing plant – exactly orchestrating light, robotics and melted plastic to quickly "print" each page. Let‘s examine how…
The entire electro-photographic ballet revolves around the photosensitive drum – an aluminum cylinder coated in light-sensitive organic particles [7]. A laser diode beams a bright light towards a mirrored spinner. As this polygon mirror rotates at high speed, it paints the laser rapidly across the drum width.
Wherever the laser strikes, light discharges electric charge from the drum‘s surface. These zones then attract tiny toner particles from the toner reservoir. This toner powder gets pulled from the drum onto paper through static electricity and pressure rollers.
Finally, extreme heat from the fuser unit melts and bonds the toner into the paper to create crisp permanent lines and spaces. What emerges is a printed page!
Modern color lasers simply use four drums – one each for layering cyan, yellow, magenta and black toner layers to render photo-realistic images. But the high-level mechanics follow the same ingenious electro-photographic process conceived five decades ago.
Still Shining Brightly After 50 Years!
Laser tech has come a long way from Gary‘s first crude printer built from scratch. We‘ve progressed from fragile prototypes to hardy workhorses churning thousands of pages per month!
But even after 50 years, Gary‘s core electrostatic printing approach remains strong while everything around it keeps evolving. For example, many modern lasers embed web servers to manage settings remotely across networks. Others add Wi-Fi and sensor support for mobile printing.
Under the hood, fusers employ lower mass belt rollers to minimize warm up times. Microscopic coatings on transfer rollers improve paper handling and image quality. Components easily snap apart for quicker servicing to maximize uptime.
And perhaps most importantly, costs keep falling even today! Compact Wi-Fi monochrome lasers now retail under $100 – quite a change from the original $3500 LaserJet. Such inexpensive availability promises to democratize quality printing for millions more emerging home offices and students worldwide.
So rest assured – while pesky inkjets dominate the ultra-budget space for now, laser printers continue shining brightly as the gold standard for businesses, schools and power users thanks to their legendary heritage spanning over half a century…and counting!
References:
[1] Smith, Esther. “The History of Laser Printing.” Digital Printing Solutions, Sep 2, 2021 [2] Starkweather, Gary. “Laser Printing” U.S Patent 3,597,071A. Aug 1971. [3] IBM Archives. “IBM 3800 Printing System”. Accessed 2023. [4] "Xerox 9700 Electronic Printing System". Xerox Historical Collection. 1977. [5] Computer History Museum. “HP LaserJet Printer” Revolution Exhibit. Accessed 2023. [6] Andy Hertzfeld. “Birth of the LaserWriter”. Folklore.org. Jan 2007. [7] Pandey, A.K.; Khan, Abdul; Prasad, Manish; Gupta, Mudit; Mondal, S.K. Fundamentals of Modern Laser Technology. Springer 2018.