"Jon Danniken" wrote in message
...
On 03/20/2013 11:23 AM, Larry Jaques wrote:
I remember dot matrix printers, too.
(I'll bet half the folks alive now don't.)

I still have a couple of them; first one was a Toshiba. I remember
the manual (which I still have around here somewhere) went into
great detail referring to the various escape codes that could be
used to manually operate the printer over a serial/parallel
interface, from printing actual letters to just pushing one pin out.

They don't do stuff like that anymore.

Jon

In the mid 80's I worked on the dot matrix inventors' next project, a
four color ink jet printer that could build up a 3D image from its
molten plastic ink.
http://dots.physics.orst.edu/tactile/node9.html

http://www.ballisticfluid.com/aboutUS.html
"It wasn't long before someone had the idea to build three dimensional
(3D) models using the same idea."

The idea was obvious to us from the ink stalagmites that accumulated
on test stands and prototypes, but for several reasons that machine
was very restricted in the height it could build up -accurately- and
we were too busy trying to make it reliable to waste effort on most of
the crazy things we knew the plastic-spraying ink jets could do. Plus
the ink had a low melting point and poor properties other than looking
good on the page.
jsw