Before Printers

The typewriter was developed around the 1870's. This machine was composed of miniature iron hammers that are cast with letters and numbers. While striking a key the miniature hammer strikes a ribbon that has been saturated with ink. The ribbon in turn, strikes a piece of paper therefore the ink is transferred to the paper. The letters are preformed so it is easy to read.

The big drawbacks on typewriters are:

• There are no font selections. Only one type of font is used per typewriter.
• There are no graphics.

To solve the font problems, an idea was developed. The idea is to wrap all the letters in the alphabet and numbers on a circular sphere. The spheres are only about 2 cubic inch. An illustration of this sphere is shown to the left. Now, by changing the spheres, you are also changing your font.

The typewriter is a great invention for texts, however, it was never meant to be used for graphics. But someone had an idea that if you use the period on the typewriter, you can matrix graphics and that is how dot matrix printers came about.