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Printers are an essential part of most computer systems. People generally prefer to read anything substantial on paper rather than on a screen. It is often easier to move information on paper than electronically - hence the popularity of bookshops. For many organisations printed material is their main point of contact with customers. Utility web sites have such a dull, stuffy predictability that people don't visit them voluntarily - but customers do get printed bills.
Design Progress. 
Printers have a boring public image, particularly in a computer industry gripped by Internet fever. A computer printer is essentially ruled by mechanical and chemical technology – not generally thought of as hot-beds of innovation by comparison with semiconductor research.
Printer design has changed radically during the last 30 years. The typewriter dominated office life in the 1970s. Computers then used modified typewriters or gigantic band-printers for output. Laser and inkjet printers have taken over so completely that a typewritten script with its slight misalignement is now seen as retro kitsch. As for hand-writing, schools and universities often ban non-printed work, if they don't demand e-mail for course work.
Print technologies change rapidly. Daisy-wheel machines from the 1980s are museum pieces. Dot-matrix and band-printers have niches printing business forms. Another few years of battle is likely between laser and inkjet technology to determine which (if either) will dominate the market. Most of the printers sold are cheap inkjets aimed at home users - these need to produce sharp, lasting photographs. Most business printing is by laser machines at present - the printer is a bit more expensive but they are faster and easier to use. Today's prices for mass produced laser printers have purchase prices that would have seemed impossible ten years ago.
Contrarily, however, not everything new in printing is progress. If the aim is photography then newer printers generally do perform better. If the aim is low cost general print the message is more mixed. A lot of new printers have small cartridges and rather high page prices.
One view of Information Technology might suggest that printers should disappear – their role taken by Internet browsers on the desktop and in peoples pockets. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) should take over from business paperwork. Most administrators would probably welcome a reduction in the burden of paper needing to be filed, and cutting down on paper might help preserve forest timber for more sensible uses. However there are lots of difficulties in the way of EDI - like common standards, legal status and simply the fact that many people and small businesses don't want a computer. Transaction printing is likely to remain necessary for a while.
Context & Retention.
Paper may also be more important than is commonly thought. Pictures on a screen have a lot of immediate impact and draw attention. How well information from a screen is communicated and retained it is still in doubt. It is at least arguable that written material of any complexity is better communicated on paper. People may absorb and retain information better from paper because they are familiar with it, or perhaps because the printed page usually has more contextual information. People may need the psychological aid of a greater spatial dimension with higher resolution and the ability to flick back and forth easily. Paper does these things well. 
Photography and Art.
Outside the business sphere printers have lots of uses. Home printing of photographs and artwork is one of the most rapidly growing activities. With many mobile phones having a camera and professional quality digital cameras available for just a few hundred pounds there is a huge market for high quality photographic printing. People seem to want this kind of printing.
Printer Potential.
Printed paper will be a popular communications medium into the foreseeable future. The only real challenge to print on paper would be a cheap, light, foldable computer screen. Electronic paper and Light Emitting Polymers do promise this, so computer-screen wallpaper is conceivable technology for the long term, but it is not likely in the near future.
Existing printing techniques are very adaptable. Nearly every surface in an indoor environment is covered with either paint or some sort of printed pattern. Photographs and artworks, wallpaper and worksurfaces, decorations on crockery, labels on CDs and the labelling on boxes are all printing or related technology. Computer printing on cloth is moving from just applying logos to T-shirts to making pre-production samples, and will clearly scale up to full production. How long will it be before DIY shops offer custom-made wallpaper? Custom veneers for kitchens? Custom clothing? Integrated circuits and electronic circuit boards are manufactured by techniques owing most to old-fashioned plate printing. Cheap, low volume production of multi-layer circuit boards could make interesting differences to the electronics industry. The emergence of new printing devices could move a significant fraction of manufacturing out of global-scale plants and back into local economies.
Printer technology is a cross-disciplinary art. A computer printer uses intelligent electronics to co-ordinate the work of complex sets of sensors and actuators, so printers are related to robotics and industrial automation. The main driving force in the emergent field of nano-technology has been construction of print-heads. The way inks abd toners move and adhere is a matter of surface energies and electrostatics. Research into the wider possibilities of ink and toner materials is a challenge to chemistry.
User Aims.
This section of the web-site is mainly concerned to giving an overview of today’s technologies for computer based or "digital" printing on paper – mainly impact, inkjet, laser and thermal techniques.
Several print techniques are possible but for one reason or another not popular. The flying keys of the typewriter and the rotating band of the bandprinter remain possibilities even though few people are buying products any more. Microfilm printers still exist. Pen plotters are uncommon - but laser engravers and cutters are based on the same principles and are a growing market - so they do get a mention on this site.
Mass Markets.
Practical printing is a combination of technique with manufacturing scale economies. There are no longer large markets for dot-matrix printers so that technology is increasingly limited to areas like point of sale, ticketing and commercial transaction recording. Thermal printing is primarily used for:
- labelling which confines it to factories and warehouses
- eceipting - it is very widely used in point of sale terminals.
- photography - dye sublimation produces rather good looking colour prints.
Big markets have emerged for
- inkjets - home photos, and wide page printing and for
- laser printers - business reports and colour brochures.
Colour Magazine.
An ideal for print users is to produce something that looks like the pages of a magazine. This format may be something people are accustomed to, it may owe its popularity to associations with relaxation but it does seem to be the aspiration. Magazines, catalogues and specialist books are traditionally printed by offset litho techniques. Traditional print techniques commonly have a high setup cost for plate making, typically several hundred pounds. A plate commonly prints on web or A0 paper so it covers 16 A4 pages and if the job isn't a multiple of 16 some are wasted. Then the press simply uns using paper, ink and a bit of human attention. Printers ink is not particularly expensive at least compared with inkjet or toner equivalents so there is usually no extra charge for page cover. With a run of several thousand copies the cost can fall well below 1p per A4 colour page. The problem with offset lithography is that it won't scale down to print uns in the hundreds.
Today’s computer printer technologies need to advance a lot before they fully meet the demand for full colour pages at low cost. The Xerox Phaser and some colour lasers come close on page look. The Xerox Phaser 7750 can produce an A3 full colour sheet for 8p, which translates to 4p per A4 page and beats most current laser printers.
Inkjet printing on special paper is so good that it is taking over the photographic market, but it's too slow and expensive to be used for printing a colour magazine.
Inkjet printed photographs commonly cost upwards of 30p each and a full A4 page can easily cost £1 or more. Inkjet prints from home printers are cheaper than high street developers but they are two orders of magnitude away from competing with mass production print. There is a commercial inkjet market using related but scaled up technology for jobs like printing posters and putting spot colour and personalisation on otherwise dull monochrome pages.
Technologies
The worldwide market for all kinds of printing is of the order $400bn. Most printed material is mass produced by conventional presses.
Conventional printing - letterpress and offset litho etc remain the biggest part of the market. The invention of movable type was critical to the development of printing. Computerised plate-making machines make this largely unnecessary and big fast printers usually function from a plate, which is identical for every copy printed. Books, magazines and newspapers are usually printed from a plate and each copy is identical to thousands and perhaps millions of others. Printing is just about the definitive mass production technology. There are just a few producers of big presses to do this sort of job :- Heidelberg for instance. Plate making tends to use Agfa
The photolithographic process used to produce printer-plates gives huge scale economies - a million copies from a plate if the press keeps turning. If there is a problem it is that the mechanism is too good in some ways - only a few books and magazines enjoy huge circulation.
Photolithography also underlies the manufacture of integrated circuits - including things like the RAM to drive a laser printer and inkjet printer heads. To some extent, computer printer making can share in the production economies of the wider printer industry.
Digital Print is the general term for computer based printers. There are about six technologies that can be used. Band-printing, dot matrix, thermal and direct laser printing all have special applications but each of these technologies hits a limit.
Laser and inkjet technology are much more flexible.
Printer Market (in thousands, USA)
| 1997 | 2001 | 2003 | ||
| Serial Dot Matrix | 803 | 610 | 521 | |
| Line Matrix | 22 | 16 | 13 | |
| Band (Line Character) | 0.48 | 0 | 0 | |
| Thermal / Dye Sblimation | 73 | 71 | 73 | |
| Ink Jet | 12,242 | 20,100 | 22,470 | |
| Monochrome Laser | 3,078 | 2,621 | 2,924 | |
| Colour Laser | 81 | 264 | 378 | |
| Total | 16,317 | 23,726 | 26,450 |
Figures from International Data Corporation ( IDC 2000)
Page printers produce a whole page at a time and include laser, LED and solid ink printers but exclude inkjets, dot,matrix and thermal mechanisms. On this class of printer shipments in 2004-2005 increased 19% - partly on the strength of a price decline of 21%
Estimates for Page Printer Shipments Worldwide, 2005 in thousands of units
| Company | 2005 Shipments | 2005 Market Share (%) |
| Hewlett-Packard | 10,527,966 | 49.0 |
| Samsung Electronics | 1,874,820 | 8.7 |
| Lexmark | 1,268,089 | 5.9 |
| Brother | 1,178,039 | 5.5 |
| Canon | 1,154,203 | 5.4 |
| Other Vendors | 5,468,926 | 25.5 |
| Total | 21,472,043 | 100.0 |
Printer Life
Since printing technology is not a settled issue it is probably wrong to expect a long life from any of the current designs. In the early 1980’s the Tally MT440 printer was designed for a 15 year life – a few may still be in use. No modern printer is likely to last so long - most will probably be written off in 5 years. We have put some effort into looking at wider issues and possibilities for printers in compiling this material. The pace of change in printer technologies means there will innevitably be developments that surprise us.