Ingenious Project
C286 Laser Printer, Hell Company, West Germany, 1970
By: Reo Santoso, 3116894
The history of printer is an integral part of the general history of civilization and its existence is crucial among the sphere of human activity. The idea began with a letterpress process into the implementation of a laser technology has brought changes to human life. It is evolves the way we see human experience and creativeness in a form of a well-designed, well-printed and well-bound edition of a manuscript. The ideas have been ambitiously developed during the past five hundred years and since that day it have been influenced on many aspects of human life; political, sociological, philosophical and economic events.
There are three main printing processes in the history of civilization. The beginning of printing history started with traditional letterpress process (Brewer, 1971). It is said that Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg is the one who invented it, although it would be more accurate to say that Gutenberg was the first to use moveable type of printer – set of cast metal characters which can be set up and arranged to become a printing surface which then used to reproduce copies. The impression on the printing surface can be taken after process of inking which then transferred onto paper. This letterpress process is the basic principle of all commercial printing. The next development of printer technology is the offset lithography invented by Bavarian author Aloys Senefelder in 1796, it is a process of printing with the help of chemical processes to create an image (Corrigan, 1944). The principle is that there are two parts of images, the positive part would be a hydrophobic chemical, while the negative image would be water. Therefore, when the plate is introduced to an ink and water mixture, the ink will stick on to the positive image and the water will clean the negative image. This allows for a relatively flat print plate which allows for much longer runs than the older physical methods of imaging. The third of the three main printing processes is gravure. In gravure printing, reels of paper fed into an image engraved plate or cylinder that uses the rotary printing press system. It is produces fast presses and has widest presses in operation. As technology becoming more advance, the printing industries also evolved in a faster and more efficient engineering systems but still hold the old principles of printing processes. Now in this era of modern printing technology, the next generation printer is the inkjet printer and the laser printer.
Rudolf Hell, founders of the Hell Company in West Germany is one of the leading telecommunications industries in Germany. According to IEC (2007), Rudolf Hell is one of the most creative and productive inventors of the modern age, he develop and improved the early technology of the telefax and the colour scanner. Also he invented facsimile transmission and pioneered key telecommunications technologies. He had showed great interest on natural sciences while he was still very young. He continued his studies at Munich Technical University and completed as a telecommunications technologist. In 1927, he in cooperation with his professor, Max Dieckmann presented the fist television transmission and reception station at the Trade Exposition in Munich. That was the same year he received the doctoral degree for describing a “directly indicating radio position-finding device”. Next progress of his career is the invention of “Hell writing telegraph system” or “Hell Recorder”. It is a device that electrically transmitting written characters and was used by many departments; post office, press agencies, the police and weather services. Then he developed the foundation or basis for today’s fax machines which remotely transmitting images. His idea was based on simple but clever advances of breaking down letters and characters into digital elements such as dots and lines. In 1954, he won victorious march into newspaper publishing house with his “Klischograph”, a device for electromechanical engraving of printing blocks that was to revolutionize the print media industry. The following success of Hell’s new inventions is the “Colorgraph” scanner in 1963, and in 1964 the “Digiset” for digital reproduction of text and pictures and the “Pressfax” for remote transmission of entire newspaper pages. In 1971, he began developing the world’s first fax machines for office applications and he also think of developing a new technology of printing called laser printer. In 1977, Hell Company started to commercially produce its own laser printers after the success of the IBM 3800, the first commercial implementation of a laser printer and the industry’s first high-speed laser printer.
C286 Laser Printer, one of the early developments of laser printer by Hell Company is basically a large commercial unit for professional level printing which it has two cylinder drums includes with 5 inch cathode ray oscilloscope on the control panel. The Printer also has many features such as; colour correction panels, gradation panel, and paper adjustment to help achieve the best result for the printing. The way this laser printer works is in a similar manner to a photocopier. A roller is charged with electricity, and then a laser removes the charge from portions of the roller. Powdered ink (toner) sticks to the parts of the roller that were hit by the laser, and this toner is transferred from the roller to the paper. Then the ink is baked into the paper using a heater. It produces high-quality output and is fast.
The impact of the invention and development of printer on society is inevitably huge. It has the same value to the development of writing and the invention of the alphabet or the internet on humanity. According to Brewer (1971), every time new printing technologies invented and discovered, demand for the printer’s product expanded. It is because printing have been took its place in a larger social, commercial and educational structure of nations and cultures. Brewer (1971) added civilized society uses print much as it uses water from a tap. Throughout history, demand has called forth the development of the technical means of production is the newspaper press. It is one of the most profited industries created from the invention. Printing is also one of the reasons in the establishment of a community of scientists who could easily share their discoveries and thinking through the establishment of widely dispersed scholarly journals, helping to bring on the scientific revolution (Corrigan, 1944). Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful and profitable. It was suddenly important who had said or written what. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). McLuhan (1962) comes up with many theories about the impact of print on human perceptions of space and time. He believed that printing has shortened human memories because of reliance that information will be stored more safely and secure in a book.
Printer is the tool to makes information available to a much larger segment of the population who were eager for information of any variety. Printer also facilitated the distribution and preservation of knowledge in standardized form -- this was most important in the advance of science, technology and scholarship.
C286 Laser Printer, Hell Company, West Germany, 1970
By: Reo Santoso, 3116894
The history of printer is an integral part of the general history of civilization and its existence is crucial among the sphere of human activity. The idea began with a letterpress process into the implementation of a laser technology has brought changes to human life. It is evolves the way we see human experience and creativeness in a form of a well-designed, well-printed and well-bound edition of a manuscript. The ideas have been ambitiously developed during the past five hundred years and since that day it have been influenced on many aspects of human life; political, sociological, philosophical and economic events.
There are three main printing processes in the history of civilization. The beginning of printing history started with traditional letterpress process (Brewer, 1971). It is said that Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg is the one who invented it, although it would be more accurate to say that Gutenberg was the first to use moveable type of printer – set of cast metal characters which can be set up and arranged to become a printing surface which then used to reproduce copies. The impression on the printing surface can be taken after process of inking which then transferred onto paper. This letterpress process is the basic principle of all commercial printing. The next development of printer technology is the offset lithography invented by Bavarian author Aloys Senefelder in 1796, it is a process of printing with the help of chemical processes to create an image (Corrigan, 1944). The principle is that there are two parts of images, the positive part would be a hydrophobic chemical, while the negative image would be water. Therefore, when the plate is introduced to an ink and water mixture, the ink will stick on to the positive image and the water will clean the negative image. This allows for a relatively flat print plate which allows for much longer runs than the older physical methods of imaging. The third of the three main printing processes is gravure. In gravure printing, reels of paper fed into an image engraved plate or cylinder that uses the rotary printing press system. It is produces fast presses and has widest presses in operation. As technology becoming more advance, the printing industries also evolved in a faster and more efficient engineering systems but still hold the old principles of printing processes. Now in this era of modern printing technology, the next generation printer is the inkjet printer and the laser printer.
Rudolf Hell, founders of the Hell Company in West Germany is one of the leading telecommunications industries in Germany. According to IEC (2007), Rudolf Hell is one of the most creative and productive inventors of the modern age, he develop and improved the early technology of the telefax and the colour scanner. Also he invented facsimile transmission and pioneered key telecommunications technologies. He had showed great interest on natural sciences while he was still very young. He continued his studies at Munich Technical University and completed as a telecommunications technologist. In 1927, he in cooperation with his professor, Max Dieckmann presented the fist television transmission and reception station at the Trade Exposition in Munich. That was the same year he received the doctoral degree for describing a “directly indicating radio position-finding device”. Next progress of his career is the invention of “Hell writing telegraph system” or “Hell Recorder”. It is a device that electrically transmitting written characters and was used by many departments; post office, press agencies, the police and weather services. Then he developed the foundation or basis for today’s fax machines which remotely transmitting images. His idea was based on simple but clever advances of breaking down letters and characters into digital elements such as dots and lines. In 1954, he won victorious march into newspaper publishing house with his “Klischograph”, a device for electromechanical engraving of printing blocks that was to revolutionize the print media industry. The following success of Hell’s new inventions is the “Colorgraph” scanner in 1963, and in 1964 the “Digiset” for digital reproduction of text and pictures and the “Pressfax” for remote transmission of entire newspaper pages. In 1971, he began developing the world’s first fax machines for office applications and he also think of developing a new technology of printing called laser printer. In 1977, Hell Company started to commercially produce its own laser printers after the success of the IBM 3800, the first commercial implementation of a laser printer and the industry’s first high-speed laser printer.
C286 Laser Printer, one of the early developments of laser printer by Hell Company is basically a large commercial unit for professional level printing which it has two cylinder drums includes with 5 inch cathode ray oscilloscope on the control panel. The Printer also has many features such as; colour correction panels, gradation panel, and paper adjustment to help achieve the best result for the printing. The way this laser printer works is in a similar manner to a photocopier. A roller is charged with electricity, and then a laser removes the charge from portions of the roller. Powdered ink (toner) sticks to the parts of the roller that were hit by the laser, and this toner is transferred from the roller to the paper. Then the ink is baked into the paper using a heater. It produces high-quality output and is fast.
The impact of the invention and development of printer on society is inevitably huge. It has the same value to the development of writing and the invention of the alphabet or the internet on humanity. According to Brewer (1971), every time new printing technologies invented and discovered, demand for the printer’s product expanded. It is because printing have been took its place in a larger social, commercial and educational structure of nations and cultures. Brewer (1971) added civilized society uses print much as it uses water from a tap. Throughout history, demand has called forth the development of the technical means of production is the newspaper press. It is one of the most profited industries created from the invention. Printing is also one of the reasons in the establishment of a community of scientists who could easily share their discoveries and thinking through the establishment of widely dispersed scholarly journals, helping to bring on the scientific revolution (Corrigan, 1944). Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful and profitable. It was suddenly important who had said or written what. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). McLuhan (1962) comes up with many theories about the impact of print on human perceptions of space and time. He believed that printing has shortened human memories because of reliance that information will be stored more safely and secure in a book.
Printer is the tool to makes information available to a much larger segment of the population who were eager for information of any variety. Printer also facilitated the distribution and preservation of knowledge in standardized form -- this was most important in the advance of science, technology and scholarship.
Image courtesy of Annexxe Museum
Image courtesy of Annexxe Museum
References
Brewer, R. 1971, An Approach to Print, 1st edn, Blandford Press, London.
Corrigan A.J. 1944, Printer and His World, 2nd edn, Western Printing Services Limited, Bristol.
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge University Press, September 1980, Paperback, 832 pages, ISBN 0-521-29955-1
IEC, 2007, Hell, Rudolf, IEC, viewed 15 may 2007,
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