TheHistoryOf.net

Remember when your school teacher lugged out that huge projector to show you overhead images? Or when he set up the slide-show projector, and all the students in the middle of the room had to move their desks aside; and the big screen had to be set up at the front of the classroom?

Xerox – a household word, right? A word synonymous with printers, photocopiers, fax machines, and a myriad of other office equipment. Here, we’ll be focusing on the printer aspect of their business. Everybody’s heard of Xerox printers, but does anybody know when the printer was invented? That’s what we’re going to tell you about here. We’re going to give you a simple education on the history of printers. Let’s see what develops.

The print cartridge is a necessity in today’s modern world, but do you know how it got started?

Would it surprise you to learn that the printer cartridge (as well as modern learning, for that matter) got its start in the bottom of an old wine press?

Take a look through this article and see for yourself. What began as a good idea in 1452 ended with one of the biggest developments in the history of the world…literacy for the masses. With it, the world could never have gotten to where we are now, and we surely would have gotten no further.

Perfect reproduction – the goal of all photocopiers. And they do a very good job of it, too. But it wasn’t always that way. When they were first invented, the copies were very poor quality – they’d be thrown in the garbage today. But it all had to start somewhere. And it started with one man who had a passion for new ideas. The history of photocopiers wouldn’t be complete without some history of this man.

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 (okay, there are claims others did before, but he filed for the patent first and he is the officially credited inventor), he soon realized that to be a success and genuinely revolutionize the way humans communicate the system would have to work over long distance, or run the risk of remaining little more than an interesting gadget for academics to mull over. So it did not take him long to improve the range. In that notable twelve months it was extended from around 8 miles to a distance of 143 miles at year’s end.

Fax machines - new technology, right? Not so, my friend. Of course, they don't go back as far as the old smoke or drum signals used centuries ago. But they do go back over 150 years.

Fax machines (short for facsimile machines) are now an integral member of the office machine family, including the printer and the photocopier. However, the fax machine uses a different technology than the others. And when you discover the historic path of office machine technology, you'll see why the fax machine was the forerunner.