🚀 go-pugleaf

On Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 9:02:50 PM UTC-4, Bob Eager wrote:

> Not to mention the 'Near Letter Quality' dot matrix printers. I bought a 
> Canon PW1080A printer in 1984 that had that. 9 pins (I think). The 
> printer did a line using the 9 pins, then reversed the carriage and moved 
> the paper up by a fractional amount. It then printed back the other way, 
> filling in the gaps between the dots. There was a separate bold function.

At that time, the expected standard for business correspondence
was a letter typed on an electric typewriter, preferably with a
film ribbon, and preferably by a Selectric.  A great many businesses
had that, but others (or some lower offices within a business) had
a plain electric.  Some still used manual typewriters for low-end
functions.

Anyway, letters printed on a dot-matrix printer, especially the
early models, looked crappy and didn't make a good impression on
the recipient.  But later, better printers came out and so many
people by then were using computers that it became acceptable.
Also, bubble-jet and laser printers were coming out, too.




We had some 9 pin Okidata printers that looked horrid, but I think
they were cheap to buy.

In the 286/386 era, I got a Panasonic 1124i dot matrix printer
that had very nice output in NLQ mode.  Even looked good in draft
mode.  It had several built in fonts that looked like various
common Selectric fonts.  Easily controlled by DOS or QBASIC commands.
Unfortunately, it no longer works; I wish I still had it for
correspondence.