Printers Galore Meet Berto’s Every Need

Printers Galore Meet Berto’s Every Need

Any visitor to RemaxWorld Expo would be forgiven thinking the event has become a showplace for a large number of purpose-built printers. Yes, the imaging supplies are all there, but so too, are a wide range of printers. As Berto points out this month, there are printers for every conceivable need where some form of output is required.

The market place traditionally had the ribbon and dot matrix printers which became very popular during the 1970s and 1980s. They are still used in various industries including point-of-sale in many retail outlets and stores. For this reason, many visitors to RemaxWorld Expo come looking for suppliers of ribbons as well as printing devices.

The laser printer, based on a modified xerographic copier, was invented at Xerox in 1969 by researcher Gary Starkweather. The first laser printer intended for a mass market was the HP LaserJet 8ppm, released in 1984, using a Canon engine controlled by HP software. Printer cartridges containing toners, OPC drums and chips continue to dominate the home, office and desktop market in terms of volume and value of sales. All are on show at RemaxWorld Expo.

Inkjet printing originated in the late 1950s but was not marketed and sold until the 1980s. The four OEMs that account for the lion’s share of inkjet printer sales are Canon, Hewlett-Packard (HP) Epson and Brother. HP led the way, releasing the first HP Deskjet inkjet printer, priced at $1000 in 1988.

In the last few years, particularly in China, there has been an emergence of a wider range of specialty printers as well. While most are targetted at the China domestic market, many developers and starting to look to international markets as well.

Today there are the thermal, blueprint, inkjet, braille, 3D, laser, fingernail, photo, wide format and label printers, with more being developed.