Home Inkjet printers made a breakthrough in the latter half of the 1980s. Until then the Dot Matrix system dominated the market. Dot matrix printers used a series of small pins to strike a ribbon coated with ink, causing the ink to transfer to the paper at the point of impact. They were however slow and not suitable for printing images. Inkjet printers have grown in popularity and performance while dropping significantly in price.
The inkjet technique is based on a series of nozzles that spray tiny drops of ink directly on the paper to create an image. In a bubble jet printer, heat is created by resistors that vaporize the ink into a bubble. Originally most printers were based on a twin ink cartridges system. One for black ink and one combined cartridge containing cyan, magenta and yellow for colour printing. |
