Printer Makers

This is an index of the printer makers and related companies we know something about.

Information here is largely from the companies own website and other Internet sources, typically Wikipedia and Answers.com (where they aren't just relaying Wikipedia). Rather than divide the information up into numerous small web pages it's all in one long page with the companies listed in alphabetic order.

At the moment information is pretty idiosynchratic; there's a bit of company history, something on the product range and any specific information known on the printer division. Large companies often don't make much information on their printer making available. Perhaps details of how divisions operate is confidential. Perhaps printers are widely if wrongly regarded as rather unimportant. And perhaps big printer makers like HP, Canon and Xerox see no reason to let on just how important printers are to their operation

As might be expected the information here focusses a bit more on big companies - sometimes the question is why they don't make printers. There is also a bit more focus on innovative companies.

Acer

Acer are known for IT products; they are the world's number three supplier of PCs behind HP and Dell and competing with Lenovo. Total revenue in 2010 was about $20Bn.

Acer were founded in 1976 as Multitech, a distributor of electronic parts particularly microprocessors. They made the ‘MicroProfessor’ series but then increasingly shifted to IBM PC compatible manufacture. About 10 years ago Acer shifted from manufacturer to design and marketing (a similar shift to HP and Apple).

The policy seems to be to keep the brand clean by not associating it with too many products but they did ship some printers under their own brand-name - the Acerlaser 406 and Acerlaser 506 - these seem to have been rebadged Epson engines. Acer use the "Benq" brand for multimedia. Home computers are produced under the Packard Bell, Gateway and eMachines brands. They also bought handheld device maker E-TEN but use the Acer brand on products.

At one time Acer were primarily known as one of the largest contract manufacturers for other brands but have re-positioned themselves in design and marketing. Contract manufacturing was spun off as "Wistron".

Alps - Are a large Japanese manufacturer of electronic components, particularly noted for touch-pads. Alps manufacture printers which are sold under other names. Alps used to supply worldwide under their own brand-name but no longer support them outside Japan. Alps were particularly known for small thermal ribbon printers working in colour.

Anadex - made rather stylish dot matrix printers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Almost certainly there are no working printers left, although spares were available from brokers into the 1990s. Centronics bought Anadex to get a line of consumer printers, but that didn't succeed.

Anitech made the M24 - an Epson compatible A4 24 pin dot matrix printer with a resolution of 360x180 dpi. We aren't sure whether it's the same company but Anitech are an Australian company specialising in sales of large-format printers.

Apollo - a maker of computer workstations taken over by HP in the 1990s.

Apple

Apple are best known for things like the iphone these days but printers have been important in the companies development. The LaserWriter, ImageWriter and StyleWriter printers complemented the Apple Mac computer range and contributed to its success as a design and graphics tool. The LaserWriter series were expensive devices based on Canon LBP-8/CX engines equipped with a powerful formatter board using the PostScript language.

Avery

Avery are a major maker of labelling printers used on production lines. The also make a couple of "Personal Label Printers"

Brother

Brother has been in the printer industry for many years, making one of the first dot-matrix printers in association with Centronics. The company also made typewriters and still makes sewing machines as well as machine tools. As well as being a well-known printer maker in its own right, Brother also has OEM agreements to make products for others. Brother also make the P-touch range of label printers, thermal printers that produce precise, brightly coloured labels.

Bull

Bull was the French national computing company for many years. The French government intended Bull to be a competitor to then mighty IBM. Like ICL in the UK Bull has never really succeeded on a world stage. ICL was ultimately folded into Fujitsu. Bull is still independent although its main shareholders are the French government and France Telecom as well as NEC and Motorola.

Bull formed relationships with several other companies over time, notably with Honeywell which has been owner and owned by Bull in various ways and with NEC who provided chips for Bull mainframes. As a way to get a share of the PC market Bull bought US company Zenith and then a share in Packard Bell.

Bull made a long series of dot-matrix printers under the "Compuprint" name and Laser and inkjet printers under the Compuprint PageMaster name. Bull made Nipson printers and payment terminals until 1999 and Compuprint printers and bank ATM machines in 2000. Bull printers are now obsolete although some are still in use.

Bull has two primary businesses: Integris is a services arm and Bull Infrastructure and Systems provides servers and IT infrastructure. Bull has primarily focused on IT services, system integration, servers, supercomputers and middleware with a focus on financial services, healthcare, telecommunications and the public sector.

Calcomp

Calcomp used to be a major maker of plotters.

Canon

Canon makes a wide range of imaging and optical products including cameras, scanners, photocopiers and x-ray machines. Canon is also one of the world's largest makers of printers. Canon developed a small laser printer the CX or LBP-8 in the early 1980s and this was used as the "engine" of the Apple LaserWriter, the HP LaserJet and various QMS printers. HP used Canon engines as the basis of all (but one) of their printers through to the LaserJet 4 series. From the late 1990s on there hasn't usually been a complete correspondence between Canon and HP products but there are often strong links. Canon's long-running alliance with HP reputedly generates about a fifth of Canon's revenue. For some reason Canon have a significantly smaller share of the laser printer market - about 10-20% against HP's 50 %.

Canon and HP both claim to have invented inkjet technology. Canon discovered the bubblejet principle in 1977 and made their first Bubblejet in 1985 but only began large-scale production in the 1990s.Canon were reputed to have 20% of this market compared to HPs 40% but that might have changed.

Canon were one of the earliest makers of calculators - a product line they still maintain. Strangely they have notably failed to gain much notice in computers, despite a 1990s joint venture with IBM to develop small computers based on the PowerPC chip. Operations to make personal computers and LCD displays closed in the late 1990s and the company refocussed on Cameras, printers and copiers.

Canon are one of the top manufacturers of cameras, their main rivals being Fuji, Nikon, and Kodak. Sony is an emergent rival, it bought the camera interests of KonicaMinolta. Canon also make binoculars, Semiconductor and LCD production equipment and medical broadcast and recording equipment.

Canon are mainly known for photocopiers which they have made since 1968 when the only real competition was Xerox. Canon have managed to surpass Xerox as a copier maker

The majority of Canon's production is in its factories in Japan but it also has subsidiaries in United States, Germany, France, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam and a joint venture in Korea. (BubbleJet printers have been made in Mexico and Scotland)

Canon's investment in R&D is large- about 7.5% of net sales each year. Canon has not been afraid to invest in new fields such as a joint venture with Toshiba worth nearly $2bn in SED high definition TV screens. Surface-Conduction Electron-Emitter Displays give flat screens with the brightness and colour performance of cathode ray tubes while using much less power than plasma and LCD screens. The problem seems to be that the price of LCD panels has dropped more quickly than expected.

CDC

CDC was based on a US Navy codebreaking team who formed ERA (Engineering Research Associates) which was subsequently bought by Remington-Rand. When Remington merged with Sperry a couple of years later the founders left and formed CDC. The CEO was William Norris and the chief designer Seymour Cray. They initially built minicomputers and then peripheral devices whilst Cray got on with designing what was to become the CDC 6600 supercomputer, finally launched in 1964. The CDC 6600 got its power by using multiple arithmetic units - similar to multi-cored microprocessors.

The CDC 6600 took a while to develop so ADC developed and sold other products: tape-drives, drum drives and drum printers. The drum printers business was developed with Holley Carburetor in rochester near Detroit but later became wholly part of CDC. As it became clear that disk-drives would replace drums CDC developed 28 inch and 14 inch disks. CDC became a world leader in 14 inch drives in the 1970s and '80s with its SMD series (Storage Module Drive). CDC developed many of the disk technologies now used in PCs. However in 1988 the disk drive division was spun off as Imprimis and bought by Seagate. Most of the remainder of CDC was bought by Syntegra, a subsidiary of BT and merged into their Global Services.

CDC printers were commonplace on minicomputer systems and mainframes through to the 1980s but there are presumably non outside museums today.

Citizen

Citizen is one of the world's largest watch manufacturers. Citizen were quite well known for consumer and office dot-matrix printers in the 1980s and established Citizen manufacturing (UK) to do so. They are now specialising in point of sale, ticket and label printers for the industrial, healthcare and retail markets. Citizen also make machine tools and electronic devices such as LEDs, LCDs and mobile phone components, thermometers, blood-pressure monitors and automotive components.

Citoh

Citoh were once a significant manufacturer of dot-matrix printers both under their own name and as an OEM. For instance The Apple ImageWriter II had a C.Itoh mechanism

Compaq

Compaq - Mainly known as a manufacturer of PCs and now an HP brandname. Compaq sold A3 laserprinters made by Fuji Xerox in the mid 1990s. Genicom also produced DECs printer range for them. Compaq also made a deal with Lexmark to brand printers. Nevertheless Compaq was never perceived as a major presence in the printer market and is forgotten in this field.

Dataproducts

Dataproducts was one of the first computer peripheral manufacturers. Dataproducts was formed in 1962 to take control of Telex's Data Systems Division which had a contract to deliver disk drives to General Electric but was failing to deliver. Dataproducts succeeded and started to develop other devices like printers. The disk drive business continued until the early 1970s when competitors like CDC had lower prices. Starting in 1963 Dataproducts produced drum printers which were generally sold to other computer makers to be badged by them. Designs shifted in the late 1970s to band and dot matrix printers. Dataproducts bought a division making daisywheel printers from Plessey in 1978. Dataproducts also sourced thermal printers from Olivetti.

In the 1980s Dataproducts produced a series of solid ink printers in a joint venture with Exxon. The solid ink printers resulted in a legal battle with Tektronix and Apple. Apple dropped their product and Tektronix had to pay royalties but the effort weakened Dataproducts and they were taken over by Hitachi Koki Co. Ltd., a unit of Hitachi in 1990.

In 1989 Dataproducts started making laser printers using an engine from Toshiba. Missing out on lasers to this late point can now be seen as a fatal flaw but the company was used to seeing its products being used for mainframe output and an 8 page per minute laser printer would have been laughable in that market.

Dataproducts used Fuji Xerox engines for their Typhoon series of laser printers. Apple sold the Typhoon 20 as the LaserWriter Pro 810. The last significant product was the LZR5200 continuous feed laser. The name changed to Hitachi Koki Imaging Systems in 1999. Dataproducts leaves very little physical legacy - there was a rather ungainly interface but most people preferred the Centronics / IEEE 1284 plug.

Dataproducts is used as a brandname by Clover Technologies Group for compatible and recycled cartridges.

Dec

DEC - or Digital Equipment Corporation. At one time the world's largest manufacturer of minicomputers, notably the PDP8, PDP11 and VAX ranges. VAX minicomputers were pretty much standard university and corporate equipment in the 1980s and DEC were second only to IBM in the world computer market. DEC failed to develop a credible PC offering or to realise that the Intel 486 and then Pentium must surpass the VAX in power. DEC was taken over by Compaq who merged with HP. DEC had a range of dot matrix printers such as the LA36 and LA120 and it badged Ricoh engined laser printers. One of the attractions of DEC systems was the comparatively open architecture - almost any peripheral could be attached using RS232. High speed printers were usually made by Dataproducts, CDC or Fujitsu.

Dell

Dell - Dell have provided a growing range of printers since 2002. Initially the printers were clearly rebadged Lexmarks but now there is more diversity. Dell are a relatively new entrant in the printer market, they originated as a maker of PCs but have diversified. Dell presumably need print consumable sales to compete with HP.

In 2009 Dell bought Perot Systems founded by H. Ross Perot in 1988 after he had sold EDS to General Motors. Perot Systems had itself grown to a workforce of 23,000 and 2008 revenues of $2.8 billion. Some commentators thought there was a mismatch of corporate cultures, for instance one the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index Perot Systems were amongst the lowest scoring and Dell Highest scoring. Very much the same comments were made about the 2008 takeover of EDS by HP.

Dymo

Dymo is a US maker of specialist printers, particularly label printers. Dymo is particularly known for making convenient label printers such as the CoStar and Labelwriter. Dymo also make the DiscPainter, an unusual machine that puts a high quality image onto a printable CD or DVD in about a minute.

Epson

Epson is one of the world's largest printer manufacturers. The company originated in the Seiko Group making timepieces and parts. Seiko group was selected as the official timekeeper for the 1964 Olympics and developed a printer to time events. In 1968 Sinshu Seiki marketed a mini-printer the EP-101 which was incorporated into calculators - EP just means "Electronic Printer". The EP 101 and its successors became very successful and the name "EPSON" was coined - son of Electronic Printer". Seiko Epson still makes watches that are sold by Seiko Watch Corporation, a subsidiary of Seiko Holdings Corporation.

Epson dominated the market for printers in the 1980s with its MX, FX and LQ ranges. The Epson "ESC/P" printer control language was originally developed to make best use of the graphical capabilities of these printers. Epson also developed piezoelectric inkjet technology which gave them an early lead in high resolution colour inkjet printers. An advantage of the piezo mechanism is that the printhead is very robust and long lasting so it does not need to be changed, reducing print costs. Epson market a full range of laser printers often based on OEM engines.

As well as the consumer and office printer ranges Epson are a notable maker of Point of Sale and labelling printers. They also make cash registers, scanners and projectors as well as robots. Epson was an early maker of portable computers and still makes PCs.

Fujifilm

Fujifilm is the world's largest photographic and imaging company, its main competitor being Kodak. Fujifilm has been involved in computing since developing one of Japan's first machines the "FUJIC" in 1956. Like other companies who make photographic products Fujifilm are repositioning themselves for the digital market with new camera product lines.

Fuji_Xerox

Fuji Xerox was established as a 50-50 joint venture between Fujifilm and Rank Xerox Corporation in 1962 to sell Rank Xerox products in Japan. Fuji-Xerox developed its own xerographic copier the 2200 in 1973 and is now responsible for many of the devices sold under the Xerox brand Rank Xerox was absorbed into Xerox Corporation in 1997. Fujifilm now have 75% of Fuji Xerox.

Fujitsu

Fujitsu is a broadline computer hardware and IT services company; it's currently (2009) the fourth largest such business in the world - behind HP and IBM. Fujitsu seems intent on strengthening its PC manufacturing.

Fujitsu was established as Fuji Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturing - a spin off from Fuji Electric, itself a joint venture between Siemens and Furukawa Electric Company. the name officially changed to the contraction Fujitsu in 1967.

Fujitsu made one of Japan's first computers the FACOM 100 in 1954 and the transistorized FACOM 222 in 1961. Through alliances and takeovers around the world Fujitsu became a significant mainframe maker and service provider taking over ICL in 1990 and Amdahl in 1997. Like a lot of mainframe makers Fujitsu had problems making a PC but in partnership with Siemens they achieved this. Fujitsu bought full ownership and changed the name to Fujitsu Technology Solutions.

At one time Fujitsu was a substantial printer maker with dot matrix and bandprinter products. Fujitsu are mainly remembered for the 4093 bandprinter. However the company withdrew from most of the market and now makes a small number of dot-matrix printers.

Genicom

Genicom was once a significant presence in the printer market and it bought other businesses. In the 1990s Texas Instruments printer business gave it airline ticket and baggage tag printers. It also bought out DEC's printer division. Genicom's products failed to track market needs and in 2000 it went into chapter 11 protection. Subsequently Genicom merged with Tally to become TallyGenicom - which itself became defunct. Hong-Kong / Chinese printer maker Dascom has taken over the Tally brand.

Gestetner

Gestetner is now a brand owned by Ricoh. In Europe Gestetner became NRG Group. Ricoh also owned the Lanier brand and merged the two to form Ricoh Europe in 2007. The Gestetner name is well known because David Gestetner invented the wax stencil method of document duplicating, founding the Gestetner Cyclograph Company in 1881. Gestetner duplicators were standard office machinery through to the mid 1980s but ultimately the "xerographic" methods used by photocopiers and laser printers replaced them.

Heidelberg

Heidelberg or "Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG" is the world leader in manufacturing offset printing presses with about half the world market. Offset printers use plates and ink rollers to produce print-runs numbered in thousands of pages at per-page prices considerably lower than currently achieved by laser or inkjet processes. Heidelberg is unusual because it produces computer based printers that emulate the behaviour of its offset machines for pre-press and suchlike purposes. Some of HPs Designjets (the 10PS, 20Ps and 50PS) have Heidelberg software for pre-press work.

Hitachi

Hitachi is one of the world's largest engineering concerns making everything from power tools to electric trains and consumer electronics like TVs. Hitachi Koki Imaging took over Dataproducts in 1990. In 2004 Ricoh bought Hitachi Printing solutions and Hitachi's DDP70 line was transferred to Ricoh and Ricoh Printing Systems Ltd.

HP

HP is the world's largest technology company (rivalled by IBM). HP is the world's largest producer of PCs, their main rival in that market being Dell. HP is also the front-running producer of all kinds of printers with around 50% of the market, Lexmark is the main rival in the US but its market share is only about 20%, similar to that of Canon. HP's dominance in printer manufacture is one of the keys to their success in other sectors - revenues from printing cross-subsidise other activities.

HP was one of the original silicon valley companies, founded in a garage in Palo Alto in 1939. Early products were aimed at audio and scientific markets; oscillators and oscilloscopes. HP began to produce computers from 1966; their scientific calculators were popular in the 1970s. HP made various dot-matrix printers as a complement to its computer range but was known for laboratory instrumentation rather than printers.

HP introduced its LaserJet laser printers in 1984. Laser printing was invented by Xerox in 1970 and marketed by shortly after, but early laser printers were based on top-end photocopiers which were large and fast. An innovation by Canon changed this,producing a small laser printer mechanism or "engine" that only printed 4 pages per minute but with a high quality appearance. Canon, HP and Apple all marketed printers based on the same engine. HP provided a machine that worked well with the growing word-processing market. A year or so later Canon produced a much smaller and rather faster engine that HP sold as the "LaserJet 2"; this proved very successful. LaserJets are almost always based on Canon print engines but HP develop the formatter board and software which convert computer data into print.

HP launched their "thinkjet" inkjet in 1984 as well, developing the technology in house. Inkjet printers are cheap to make and HP have almost always used thermal inkjet cartridges which are also cheap to make. Adding extra cartridges to a printer gives one of the simplest ways to make a colour printer. The thermal inkjet printheads that HP uses do not have a very long life but in some ways this simplifies maintenance - most faults are cured by changing the cartridge.

The instrumentation business that underlay HPs early growth were spun off as Agilent Technologies in 1999. In 2002 HP merged with Compaq, which in turn had bought Tandem Computers and Digital Equipment Corporation. In 2008 HP purchased EDS reinforcing their position as a first-rank global IT services company.

HP has had something over 50% of the global printer market in recent years

HP initiated the HPLIP project to make all HP inkjet and laser printers work with Linux giving full printing, scanning, and faxing support.

IBM

IBM is HP's main rival in global IT services and hardware. IBM originated in 1896 as the Tabulting Machine Company so its early printers worked with punched cards. In the late 1940s the company began to build computers and this became its main business. The most effective way to deliver computing power cost effectively was to build big, fast machines now called mainframes so that is what IBM mainly did. At the peak of their power in the 1980s IBM had something like 80% of the world computer market.

Mainframe makers have two uses for printers: user interaction via a little local printer and reporting which is done on big fast centralised printers.

IBM had the rights to manufacture Electromatic typewriters in the 1930's which was used as the basis for a table printing machine. One of IBMs early innovations was the "Selectric" golf-ball typewriter. The Selectric produces neat lines of type with few of the misalignments characteristic of earlier flying-key machines and was a mainstay of office documentation for many years. It was sometimes suggested that IBM's main revenue stream was actually from the Selectric typewriter and this cross-subsidised the computer business. That would match the idea that HP's finances depend on printer cartridge sales.

Selectric

Selectric user interaction was often provided by printing terminals. The Selectric typewriter could be used as a relatively slow computer input-output device. The IBM 1050 and 2741 were used in this role; other companies used the rather slower teletype to do the same job.

Reporting needs fast printers. Even in the 1950s mainframe computers could perform millions of simple arithmetic operations per second so even if a printer manages thousands of lines per second it would still be a bottleneck. The bottleneck problem is partly relieved by using a spooler - print output goes to a fast output device such as a tape-drive and is then redirected to the printer. IBM manufactured a variety of printers including some large and fast printers and the Proprinter, Quickwriter and Quitewriter personal printer series.

In 1991 IBM sold some of its hardware manufacturing operations to investment firm Clayton & Dubilier, Inc. in a leveraged buyout to form Lexmark. Lexmark itself became a public company in 1995 and is now one of the world's largest printer manufacturers.

In 1993 IBM suffered what was then the world's largest ever corporate loss. Revenue from mainframes dipped rapidly as customers reoriented themselves towards Microsoft Windows desktops with fileservers and "client server computing". IBM changed direction emphasising services against hardware. IBMs PC manufacturing was sold to Lenovo in 2005 The IBM Printing Systems division was more recently sold to Ricoh. IBM printers such as the IBM 6400 line matrix printers are made by Printronix Corp and lightly rebranded for IBM.

Imagistics

Imagistics was a US reseller of office copiers and multifunction printers which was a spin-off from Pitney Bowes Office Systems. The company was aquired by OcÃ© in 2005. OcÃ© in turn were bought by Canon.

Infotec

Infotec was established as a brand in 1972 to produce high performance office equipment . The European product range typically used liquid toner copiers and thermal fax and was largely manufactured by Ricoh. Infotech was aquired by US based Danka in the 1990s and amalgamated it with Kodak Office Imaging under the Infotec name. Danka in turn sold the European operations to Ricoh Europe. Infotec is to trade as a standalone business within the Ricoh Group. In 2008 Konica Minolta acquired Danka (in the US).

Infotec appears in the CUPS drivers with the 4651 MF

IntelliTech manufactures open system bar-code label print systems. The printers are : the Model 48, 412 and 88 in varieties using HP PCL5 and IBM AFP/IPDS. (There is another company with the same name that specialises in software for electronic design automation.)

Kodak

Kodak is the world's largest supplier of photographic film. Kodak was an early producer of digital cameras and like other photographic businesses sees this as the main future market. Kodak now gets 70% of its revenue from sales of digital cameras. The shift to digital is obviously difficult for photographic companies because they have traditionally enjoyed substantial revenue streams from developing and printing pictures. Digital photographers are likely to use a home computer printer - if they print on paper at all. One of Kodak's responses has been a worldwide rollout of about 80,000 Picture Kiosks that print from digital cameras.

Kodak is innovative in production of digital cameras and image sensors.

Kodak has been involved in printing for many years. In the early 1990s they made an innovative if odd multifunction copier and laser-printer. The current strategy seems to have two parts: one aimed at industrial printing and the other at small and home offices.

Kodak acquired Scitex Digital Printing in 2003. Scitex is a world leader in ultra high speed inkjet print systems used for transaction printing. This gave Kodak access to a patent portfolio for continuous inkjet printing technology, about 9,000 user sites and 733 people. Strangely Kodak had sold the division a decade earlier.

Kodak have also taken full control of NexPress Solutions which was a joint venture with Heidelberg

Kodak produce a range of inkjet All-in-One Printers the EasyShare 5100, 5300 and 5500 with camera docks and the ESP3, 5,7 and 9.

Kodak DigiSource 9110, Easyshare-Printer-Dock, IS 70 CPII.

Konica Minolta

Konica Minolta manufactures and markets business and industrial imaging products - copiers, laser printers, faxes and multifunction devices. Target markets are primarily corporations, copy service providers and print shops.

Konica was a Japanese manufacturer of photographic cameras, film, photocopiers and laser printers. Konica's ancestry dates back to 1873. Minolta was similar, a maker of cameras, photocopiers, fax machines and laser printers dating back to 1928. Minolta had particular strengths in laser printing having cooperated with QMS for some years and then bought the company in 2000.

Konica Minolta. In 2003 the two companies merged forming Konica Minolta. Digital camera development had become extremely competitive and in 2006 the new company announced it would leave the camera and photo business selling its SLR camera business to Sony.

The printer lines have now been largely merged taking the best from each heritage.

The bizhub C350 is recognisably a Minolta design. (Minolta CF2203 and Konica 8022)

The 7235 is a Konica design.

The bizhub 130f is actually made by Minebea and has its marks on hardware and in software drivers.

Kyocera

Kyocera was founded in 1959 as Kyoto Ceramic Co making a ceramic insulator for CRTs. the company broadened its range to semiconductor packages, solar panels, biocompatible ceramics and ceramic tipped knives, ball-point pens and lab-grown gemstones.

Kyocera has some history in laser printers, the F800, F1000 and its successors were popular in the late 1980s because they were somewhat cheaper than the HP and Canon equivalents. Kyocera invented a user friendly print language "Prescribe" but their printers had good HP emulation and / or PostScript so it was easy to use them without using the language.

Kyocera introduced their "Ecosys" range in 1993 to some acclaim - the machines only consumed toner. Unfortunately the printers didn't live up to expectations - or rather they did need replacement drums intermittently and Kyocera wasn't geared up to provide them.

In 2000 Kyocera acquired Mita Industrial, a photocopier manufacturer and created KyoceraMita Corporation.

Kyocera bought the mobile phone manufacturing operations of QUALCOMM to form Kyocera Wireless Corp and aquired Sanyo's global mobile phone business in 2008.

Kyocera is focussed on Solar cells, mobile phones and various uses of ceramics. Printer interests are dealt with by Kyocera Mita.

Lanier

Lanier is a significant name in copiers and printers but the brand has now been folded into Ricoh's operations in most countries and into NRG group in the UK.

Lexmark

Lexmark makes laser and inkjet printers. Lexmark makes a pretty full product range with printers and multifunction copiers targeted at the home, small office and at large offices. (But doesn't compete with HP on plotters)

Lexmark originated as IBMs printer division which was sold to Clayton & Dubilier, Inc. in 1991 in a leveraged buyout. The company became a major printer maker in one stroke, second only to HP. Lexmark became a publicly traded company in 1995. Lexmark has maintained about a quarter of the world printer market with more than $5bn of revenues in 2005.

Lexmark's HQ is in Lexington, Kentucky. Other manufacturing and research bases are:

Boulder, Colorado; Cebu, Philippines; Chihuahua, Mexico; JuÃ¡rez, Mexico and OrlÃ©ans, France.

Lexmark don't seem to use contract manufacturers a great deal (but some engines are sourced from Funai?). Rather a significant part of Lexmark's business is building printers for others including Samsung, Xerox, Fujitsu and Kodak, which sell them under their own names (cnet). Lexmark used to make printers for Compaq but lost that business when HP and Compaq merged, although the cartridge revenue continued for a while. Lexmark now make printers for Dell, keen to build its own revenues from cartridges.

Lexmark don't seem able to catch up with HP. Lexmark don't have to share their revenue from cartridge sales with less profitable PC divisions but they have half the sales to support their R&D and marketing effort.

Minebea

Minebea grew from a ball bearing producer to be a major producer of motors, fans and other components and electronic devices. One of Minebea's main lines is hard disk motors. It is also a contract manufacturer for other companies. The US holdings are organised as NMB

Minolta

Minolta made several printers as an independent company often in cooperation with QMS. In 2000 Minolta took over QMS and began to merge product lines. In 2003 Minolta merged with Konica - see KonicaMinolta.

Mitsubishi

Mitsubishi. The Mitsubishi group of companies form a loose entity, the Mitsubishi Keiretsu, which is often referenced in US and Japanese media Mitsubishi CP50. ///

NEC

NEC Pinwriter, Silentwriter, Superscript /// NEC had a long-running partnership with Bull supplying them with processors for mainframes.

Newbury Data

Newbury Data is a UK company which supplied a range of dot-matrix printers from the 1980s to 1990s. Newbury data printers were generally aimed at business users in offices and warehouses. The printers were generally quite heavily built with a steel chassis inside a "Startrek" styled plastic enclosure that served to reduce noise somewhat. Most printers were single-head 9 pin devices. Newbury's last home-produced product was the ND640 / 680. The ND640 was a single head 18 pin device and the ND680 had two 18 pin heads. The single biggest customer was BT which apparently bought about 700 units for use in phone exchanges. Newbury Data couldn't compete against the likes of Epson and Brother. After an attempt to sell rebadged printers made by Bull they now supply barcode labelling products.

NRG-RICOH

NRG absorbed into Ricoh

OCE

OCE developed the dry diazo process for copying and became the world leader in printing products for the engineering market. OcÃ© has grown through innovation and acquisition in this sector and in making printers with exceptionally high-performance and reliability.

OKI

OKI describes itself as selling info-telecom and printer products. Oki was Japans's first telephone manufacturer and is still noted for its electromechanical products. OKI makes key telephone, VoIP, and callcenter products. OKI had a semiconductor business but sold it to Rohm in 2008. Building on it's expertise in mechatronics Oki developed electric typewriters and terminals and developed products specially suited to the finance industry, hence a strong line of ATM products today.

Oki developed early car-phone products working with Bell Labs. This developed into an interest making wireless communication chips for things like Electronic Toll Collection (ETC).

The printer business operates through OKI Data under the name OKI Printing Solutions. OKI has two main strengths: a range of dot matrix printers that are widely used for business purposes and a range of electrostatic printers that use LED rather than laser heads. OKi don't make inkjets and don't badge up other products.

Oki uses some unusual technologies in its printers such as LED array printheads instead of laser scanners. They are building a new clean-room to quadruple LED production and double non-impact printer sales. Some demand for LED technology is expected to come from a growing market for ultra small displays.

OKIs main factories are in Fukushima, Japan; Scotland; Thailand; Shenzen China

Olivetti

Olivetti manufactures computers, printers, copiers and other business machines. The company originated as a typewriter maker in 1908 and began making calculators in 1948 and computers in 1959. Olivetti typewriters were noted for the attention to design. Olivetti M20 computers based on the Zilog Z8000 provided multi-user Unix at low cost and the M24 was an early success as a clone of the PC, however Olivetti failed to develop successors. In 2003 Olivetti was absobed into Telecom Italia maintaining a seperate identity as Olivetti Tecnost. Olivetti is now producing a new line of office multifunction devices.

Olympus

Olympus has its historic base in optics and imaging. The company's forerunner was established in 1918 as a maker of microscopes and thermometers. Optical work naturally brought an interest in cameras, the first was made in 1936. Olympus became a famous brand but in the 1980s they failed to develop autofocus models to compete with Nikon and Canon so their sales of cameras declined. Today Olympus is noted for Digital SLR production.

Olympus has a strong business in biological sciences (microscopes and automated analysers) and medicine (endoscopes). Olympus also made a series of popular Microcassette voice recorders. They have built on this with high quality digital voice recorders like the Voice-Trek LS-10

Olympus has marketed a few printers, mostly dye-sub devices to complement its digital cameras. P-10, P-11, P- 200 etc.

Panasonic

Panasonic is the world's largest consumer electronics company, particularly known for TV and HiFi. Sony is the main competitor.

Panasonic was founded by Konosuke Matsushita in 1918, initially making lamp sockets, bicycle lamps and suchlike. The company is unifying its branding under the name Panasonic but is also known as Matsushita, Technics and National. From 1947 on the company rose to be Japans largest makers of radios and other electronic appliances - and of bicycles reflecting the founders passion for the machines. Panasonic is particularly noted for TV and audio manufacture but also makes phone systems, copiers, LP and LCD projectors, LCD screen, DVD drives.and white-boards.

Panasonic is not greatly known for computers and PCs but it does make the "Toughbook" targeted at industrial, law-enforcement and military uses.

Panasonic also make electronic typewriters and printers. Panasonic have produced the KX-P series of dot matrix printers for many years and they are still available. They also made some innovative laser printers in the mid 1990s which sold well initially.

Panasonic make a small range of printers - currently just the KX-F and UF series of fax machines and a couple of multifunction laser faxes seem to be available.

PCPI 1030 - nothing known

Pitney Bowes

Pitney Bowes make postage franking machines and meters, addressing software and mail sorters. This lead them into barcode equipment and finance and payment equipment. One of their products is a Digital Document Delivery platform "D3". In the last few years they have made a string of acquisitions in location intelligence, shipping, printing, encryption and mail processing.

Pitney Bowes copiers were quite well known in the 1980s and 90s, they were mainly made by Ricoh.

Pitney Bowes own Danka Services International (DSI) a London based supplier of imaging equipment and supplies. (See Infotec, Ricoh etc). Print Inc and Emtex both supply print management.

Printronix

Printronix is an independent specialist producing line matrix printers primarily aimed at bar-code label printing. Line matrix uses a string of print elements arranged horizontally across the page producing a single line of pixels in one operation. In practice it is difficult to have something around 1,300 mechanisms across a page-width so there is usually a shuttle mechanism that pushes each hammer back and forth over a pitch of about 1/10th of an inch - hence the alternative name shuttle-printer. The line matrix mechanism gives a high print speed combined with an economy in operation that lasers can't match and inkjets have problems matching.

PWG is the Printer Working Group, a consortium of printer and network manufacturers which started in 1991 and was later made part of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). PWG has had input into the IEEE 1284 parallel port specification, Print protocols for IEEE 1394 and IETF Internet Printing Protocol (IPP)

QMS

QMS (Quality Micro Systems) was a laser-printer manufacturer based in Mobile, Alabama. QMS is noted as an early developer of laser printers and for introducing some of the first low cost colour laser printers.

QMS's first product in 1977 was the Magnum board - a controller which provided graphics from standard printers enabling them to print large characters and barcodes. Later they made a series of Lasergrafix Controller for Canon printers and along with Apple popularised the use of PostScript.

QMS began partnership agreements with Minolta in 1993 and in 1999 Minolta took a 51% stake, then outright ownership in 2000. Minolta subsequently agreed a partnership with Konica as "KonicaMinolta" so the QMS brand is no longer used and only a few of its printers are still in service.

Raven: Nothing Known

Ricoh

Ricoh manufactures electronic and imaging devices, mainly cameras, printers copiers and fax machines. Through the late 1990s and early 2000s it was the largest copier maker in the world. Ricoh has been involved with laser printer making for a long time, for instance it made laser engines for DEC.

The Ricoh Group now includes Gestetner, Rex-Rotary, Nashuatec, Savin, Lanier, Infotec and IKON and the European operations of Danka which operates under the Ifotec brandname.

As well as these brands Ricoh has manufactured machines for Pitney bowes, Toshiba and Fax machines for AT&T and Omnifax.

Ricoh bought: Hitachi Printing solutions in 2004 creating a new company, Ricoh Printing Systems, Ltd. IBM Printing Systems Division in 2007 to form new Ricoh subsidiary, InfoPrint Solutions Company, with 51% share.

Roland

Roland Corporation is mainly known as a manufacturer of musical instruments. Roland DG makes wide format inkjet printer /plotters, vinyl cutters which are used to make signage and point of sale equipment, desktop milling machines, engraving machines and 3D scanners.

Sanyo

Sanyo Founded by Toshio Iue, brother of Konosuke Matsushita as a subcontractor providing components to Matsushita's Pansonic and Technics brands. Sanyo has been bought by Panasonic and is being merged into the group.

Samsung

Samsung is the biggest business group in South Korea, surpassing its archrival Hyundai in 2007 and well ahead of LG. Turnover is around 100 million dollars putting Samsung in the same league as HP and IBM. Unlike those companies Samsung Electronics is affiliated to Samsung Heavy Industries - a shipbuilder and Samsung Engineering & Construction a global construction company. The Samsung name means "three stars" and these three divisions have been the base of the company although it has interests in finance, insurance, retailing and entertainment. Samsung group companies account for about 20% of South Korea's exports.

Amongst other things Samsung is the largest manufacturer of DRAM and flash memory chips and second largest chipmaker after Intel. Samsung is the largest maker of TVs and LCD panels and optical storage drives. Samsung is second largest maker of mobile phones (after Nokia), third largest maker of compact cameras and fourth largest maker of hard disks.

Samsung claim to be the largest maker of laser printers

Savin - absorbed into Ricoh

Seiko

Sharp

Sharp is one of the largest manufacturers of office equipment and household appliances in Japan. It is also a particularly significant manufacturer of LCD display panels. Sharp gets its name from it's founder Tokuji Hayakawa's first invention - a retractable pencil. In 1923 the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed his factory and killed his family. A year later he went back into business making the Ever-Sharp pencil but with a new interest in making radios. Hayakawa did not have backing from any of the zaibatsu conglomerates or the government so he was not associated with the right-wing militarists who took control of Japan and his business survived the war and its aftermath - albeit with difficulty. Hayakawa had a new interest in Television an began developing an experimental set in 1951, before TV broadcasting in Japan had even been planned. When broadcasting did start two years later he was ready with a commercial set under the brand-name "Sharp".

Economy

The Japanese economy began a period of rapid expansion from 1952 on. Hayakawa began developing colour TVs and was ready with products when colour broadcasting began in Japan. In 1962 Sharp introduced a microwave oven and in 1964 the Compet desktop calculator - the first to use transistors. Sales subsidiaries opened in the US in 1962, in West Germany in 1968 and in Britain in 1969.

Also in 1969 Sharp started building VLSI factory automation systems which allowed them to reduce a calculator to the size of a paperback book. In retrospect this is very significant - at around the same time a deal between Busicomp and Intel resulted in the microprocessor. Sharp also began producing gallium arsenide LEDS.

In 1970 the company changed its name to Sharp Corporation and Hayakawa retired. New president Akira Saeki had been in America at the time of the moon landings and knew how important semiconductor ICs had been so he began to reorient the business around VLSI production. Retrospectively a more important decision was to incorporate an LCD screen in a calculator, replacing the more power hungry LED and VFD devices used by other manufacturers. Sharp also began to build its largest plants overeas to head off the protectionist pressures growing in the US and EU

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In 2000 Sharp, Xerox and Fuji Xerox began a partnership to develop next-generation inkjet printers.

Shinko

Sipix

SiPix Pocket Printer A6 is a very small portable printer weighing less than a pound, rough postcard size and less than an inch thick. It uses thermal paper in rolls roughly 100mm wide at 400dpi. Many computer applictions can scale the print to fit.

SiPix manufactures electronic paper used in pricing labels - this seems to be a different manufacturer but it's still of interest.

Siemens

Siemens is Europe's largest engineering company; it now has three divisions Eindustry, Energy and Healthcare.

The company started in 1847 With Werner von Siemens invention of a pointing needle telegraph. The company began making AC alternators in 1881 and diversified into electric trains and light bulbs. Radios, early TVs and armaments were added as products in the 1930s. In the 1950s computers, semiconductors and washing machines were added. Siemens was one of the definitive engineering -based conglomerates.

In the 1999 the semiconductor division was spun off as Infineon Technologies.

Siemens have had consumer facing divisions for mobile phones and PCs but seem to be withdrawing from this and focussing on infrastructure.

Siemens made mobile phones, however in 2005 Taiwanese company Benq (Acer's Multimedia brand) bought the business together with the right to use the Siemens trademark for 5 years.

In 1991 Siemens acquired Nixdorf Computer AG and renamed it Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, then in 1999 it became part of Fujitsu Siemens Computers AG whilst the retail banking group became Wincor Nixdorf. In 2008 Fujitsu acquired the entire concern and changed its name to Fujitsu Technology Solutions. Siemens has withdrawn from the PC market.

Siemens has merged its fixed network, mobile network and carrier services divisions with Nokia to form Nokia Siemens Networks.

Siemens Nixdorf manufactured printers capable of producing over 1,000 prints a minute. The division was sold to OcÃ© in 1995.

Sony

Sony is the second largest consumer electronic business in the world (Panasonic is bigger). Sony was established as "TTK" in Japan just after WWII and its first product was a rice-cooker which was a market failure. Attention shifted to electronics and Sony made one of the first tape recorders. Accidentally they discovered a US military booklet called Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine Uses of the Tape Recorder. Translated into Japanese the booklet became a very effective marketing tool and Sony had to move premises to cope with the orders.

Sony has a record of innovation including one of the first transistor radios. Early understanding of transistor principles served well, Sony was first to market with an all-transistor TV. The Trinitron TV was another breakthrough as was the U-matic VCR which was a studio standard in the 1970s and 80s.//// Walkman and together with Philips the establishment of the CD. The Betamax VCR is celebrated as a technical mistake but things aren't so simple. Matsushita owned half of JVC which developed VHS and stubborn behaviour seems to have been at least as important as technology. Subsequently Sony developed the 8mm video format cooperating with around 100 other producers.

Sony is also a large movie and music producer owning Colombia TriStar Studios and the Epic record label. The synergies of owning content and media have never quite worked as Sony might have hoped, but nor have they failed spectacularly badly.

Sony is like other conglomerates in owning a finance arm - in this case insurance.

In computing Sony has been significant as a producer of games consoles which produce about 10% of revenue. Games consoles have yet to realise their full potential as general purpose graphics interfaces and processors. Sony placed its Vaio laptop and PlayStation games in the same networked products division in 2009.

Sony is also significant as a producer of tape based storage.

Sony's main computing product is it - VAIO line of PCs - desktop and notebook models first intoduced in 1997.

Sony has not made many printers: DDP-EX5, IJP-V100, UP-DP100, UP-DR100, UP-DR150

- Star micronics have been a significant presence making printers but at present they make POS and receipt printers. The main thrust is making other electronic components such as audio sensors and connectors.

Tally

Tally was founded in 1949 as a US based manufacturer of punch-tape readers used in telegraphy, process control and computing. In 1970 Tally developed matrix line-printers - an expensive but fast and flexible type of printer. At around the same time the German Mannesman group founded Mannesmann PrÃ¤zisiontechnik to make dot-matrix printers. In 1979 these two companies merged to form Mannesman Tally which became a significant player in the printer industry.

In 1996 a management buyout reformed Tally as an independent company based in Germany with business partners in more than 130 countries. The German arm of the company developed serial dot matrix and professional inkjets whilst the US arm developed line-printers and colour printers. In 2003 to gain size Tally merged with Genicom to form TallyGenicom. Although the merged company offered every kind of printer it has been troubled. The UK business entered administration in February 2009. Hong Kong Chinese firm Dascom has re-formed Tally as a market presence.

Tektronix

Tektronix - primarily a test and measurement company but to print the output Tektronix also developed flatbed plotters and in the 1980s they manufactured the 4014 a graphics workstation. Tektronix developed the "Phaser" solid inkjet technology but Xerox bought that operation in 1999.

Tektronix was founded by C. Howard Vollum and Melvin J. "Jack" Murdock who invented the triggered oscilloscope in 1946. The company originated in Portland, Oregon and is based in Beaverton. Tektronix makes a wide range of scientific and technical instruments, usually devices that are unmatched in quality and stability. To get the best Oscilloscope tubes they built their own factory making them. Likewise they built an integrated circuit plant to make devices with higher performance than mass market items. There seems to be a consensus that Tektronix expanded into too many markets in the 1980s - they made plotters and printers but as mentioned the "Phaser" business was sold to Xerox. They made X-terminals but that business was sold to Network Computing Devices. They made TV studio Equipment in subsidiary Grass Valley Group but that was spun off and is now part of Thomson. Tektronix returned to its roots as an instrument maker. In 2007 Danaher Corporation bought the whole company.

Toshiba

Toshiba is a technology conglomerate with a wide ranging product portfolio and multinational presence. As a computer maker its notebooks have been popular since the early 1990s - it has been a consistent world leader in portable computing. Toshiba is also a major manufacturer of semiconductors and LCD screens. Toshiba also make cookers and DVD players, medical equipment such as x-ray machines, batteries, railway equipment, air traffic control systems and power plants. Toshiba has a history of working in joint ventures.

About 60% of Toshiba's turnover is from electronics. Toshiba was the world's third largest semiconductor manufacturer in 2008, after Intel and Samsung. Toshiba is the fifth largest computer maker after HP, Dell, Acer and Lenovo. Toshiba is also one of the largest TV manufacturers. Toshiba often works in joint ventures with other companies, notably with Motorola and IBM. Toshiba and Time-Warner established the DVD standard against a rival standard from Sony and Philips The company employs nearly 200,000 people worldwide. About half of turnover comes from outside Japan.

Toshiba's main competitors are Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi and NEC. Siemens, Samsung and GE are non-Japanese businesses that are similar.

Toshiba was formed in 1939 by a merger of Shibaura Seisaku-sho and Tokyo electric Company.

Hisashige Tanaka established Tanaka Seisaku-sho (Shibaura Engineering Works) as Japan's the first telegraph equipment maker in 1875. The company became one of the leaders in creating a technological society from an agrarian and feudal society and expanded into transformers, motors, generators and other heavy electrical equipment. The company became Shibaura Seisaku-sho in 1904.

Tokyo Electric was originally Hakunetsu-sha & Company and manufactured incandescent lamps, adopting the name Toyo electric in 1899. Tokyo electric and Shibaura Seisaku-sho merged and hybridised the name to Toshiba. After the war Toshiba secured backing from the Mitsui Group trading house and began a period of development making broadcasting equipment in 1952, digital computers in 1954 and microwave ovens in 1959.

Toshiba

By the early 1960s Toshiba had grown bureaucratic in its ways and profits dropped whilst its growth paled beside that of Sony and Hitachi. Toshiba appointed Toshiwo Doko as president, he had successfully merged Ishikawajima Heavy Industries and Harima Shipbuilding to form the world's largest shipbuilder IHI. IHI and Toshiba had mutual shareholding in one another. Doko created an alliance with General Electric of the US to provide capital whilst Toshiba exported generators, motors, TVs and home appliances.

In 1980 Shoichi Saba was appointed president. As an engineer by training he increased R&D significantly making Toshiba into a one of the world's leading semiconductor makers. Toshiba developed an Information and Communications Systems Laboratory to develop and integrate office systems. By 1987 Toshiba was manufacturing half the world's DRAM chips - which lead to protectionist pressure in the United States. Toshiba and Motorola created a joint venture to make memory and processor devices.

Toshiba also developed phone technology which it used to make PBX systems; in an agreement with AT&T they began marketing these systems .

Another agreement with IBM had Toshiba market mainframes in Japan. IBM was regarded as a "foreign interest" in Japan which blocked sales to government. Toshiba supplied IBM equipment and its own communications equipment. A further agreement between Toshiba and IBM helped develop Toshiba's PC-compatible laptop computer product line. A class action lawsuit in the US claimed the floppies used in 5 million Toshiba notebooks were faulty and potentially had caused data loss. Toshiba agreed a $1.1bn settlement although that decision has been widely criticised as caving in too quickly.

Toshiba is best known for audio-visual consumer electronic products - TV and DVD, CD

Toshiba moved down a path Sony had already followed buying a stake in Time Warner Entertainment. One outcome of this was the development of the DVD standard.

Toshiba has made a very limited range of printers, mainly the e-studio range of digital photocopiers.

Xante

Xerox

Xerox corporation owned the patents to the xerographic photocopier and had almost 100% of the market until the mid 1970s. Xerox PARC invented Ethernet, the laser printer and the computer graphical user interface.

Xerox is founded on Chester Carlson's invention of a photoelectric method for copying documents. Carlson had a day-job as a patent agent but even with his deep knowledge of innovation it took ten years before he got Haloid Corporation interested in his ideas. Haloid was a maker of photographic films and made the "Rectigraph" a photographic copier. The electrographic methods used in Carlson's inventions were unfamiliar to people in the photographic industry. Haloid in turn took about a decade to turn the patents and ideas into really practical machines. In the late 1950s photocopiers became one of the key office technologies. A photocopier was a must-have item - it still is although today's digital copiers combine a scanner and a printer.

Xerox PARC invented some of the key developments of the computer industry in the 1970s. It failed to capitalise on them might have been cause by an excess of sales hubris. In the late 1990s Xerox revamped its product range using digital copying techniques and emphasised the idea that documents can be paper or documents can be digital, Xerox is still one of the world's largest corporations although it is only a quarter the size of HP, IBM and Dell.

The European operations were once called Rank Xerox but Xerox bought that company in 1997 and the name is no longer used. Xerox owned half of Fuji Xerox but the FujiFilm now own 75%.

To sell photocopiers in the 1960s and '70s Xerox created a large direct sales operation. Xerox products are firmly targeted at business uses. Xerox knows how to sell to corporate buyers but HP, Lexmark and Brother do much better in the small to medium business sector which actually buys more printers.

In 1999 Xerox bought the printing division of Tektronix with its "phaser" technology. This move catapulted Xerox into number 2 position in the printer market. That momentum was quickly lost.

In 2000 Xerox, Sharp and Fuji-Xerox created an alliance on inkjet printer that they reckoned would create printers that worked twice as fast and cut 20% off costs. Planning to spenf $2Bn on research over 5 years on research, manufacturing and marketing. Nearly a decade later HP have consolidated their market lead; alliances don't seem able to topple their position.

Xerox has a track record of invention. Eco-friendly products have become central to the message.a particular interest is re-useable paper - printers that use invisible ink.

Zebra

Zebra makes thermal bar code printers and RFID smart label printers and readers. Zebra is one one of the top selling bar-code printers - as is Avery. Zebra are unusual, incorporated as Data Specialities in 1969 to make high speed electromechanical devices such as dot matrix printheads. They changed focus in the 1980s adopting the name "Zebra" in 1982. Factories are in Vernon Hills, Illinois and Camarillo, California. There are also facilities in Bourne End UK and Preston in the UK, at Heerenven in the Netherlands and Warsaw in Poland. Zebra also owns the Swedish ticket printer company Swecoin. Zebra have spanned the mainframe, microcomputer and Internet eras - but remained under the radar as a sub billion dollar company.

This page was compiled by and is copyright Graham Huskinson. All errors and omissions are his. Research was carried out using Wikipedia and Manufacturers websites during 1999. The base list itself came from /usr/share/foomatic/db/source/printer (specifically on Ubuntu but most Linux Distros have it)