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PrinterArchive

Historical Manufacturers

Factual heritage and product-line overviews of printing, imaging, and impact-era hardware manufacturers not already covered by the eight existing brand pages. Each entry summarizes a company's documented printing history, notable technologies, and corporate lineage (mergers, spin-offs, acquisitions) without rankings, reviews, prices, or performance claims.

10 live pages · long-term capacity 28–55

Entities

organization

IBM · OKI Electric Industry · NEC Corporation · Konica Minolta · Samsung Electronics · Tektronix · Centronics · Diablo Systems · Digital Equipment Corporation · Fujitsu · Olivetti · Printronix · QMS · Star Micronics · Citizen Systems · Océ · Eastman Kodak · Wang Laboratories

brand

Panasonic · Apple

Connected clusters

In the archive

Pages in this cluster

Planned coverage

  • OKI: Printer Manufacturer Overview — OKI Electric's Microline dot-matrix line and its LED-array page-printing technology.
  • NEC: Printer History and Product Lines — NEC's Spinwriter daisy-wheel and Pinwriter dot-matrix families in the office-printing era.
  • Panasonic: Printing Product Heritage — Panasonic's KX-P dot-matrix and later laser and multifunction office devices.
  • Samsung: Printing Division History — Samsung's laser and multifunction printer business and the 2017 transfer of that division to HP.
  • Tektronix: Color Printing and the Phaser Line — Tektronix's Phaser color printers and solid-ink technology, and the 2000 sale of the division to Xerox.
  • Printronix: Line and Industrial Printing — Printronix's line-matrix and industrial/thermal barcode printing for high-duty environments.
  • QMS: PostScript Laser Printing Pioneer — QMS's early adoption of PostScript in laser printers and its later merger into Minolta-QMS.
  • Star Micronics: Printer Overview — Star Micronics' dot-matrix heritage and its enduring point-of-sale receipt printing lines.
  • Citizen: Printing Product History — Citizen Systems' dot-matrix, portable, and receipt/label printing history.
  • Fujitsu: Printer History and Product Lines — Fujitsu's DL-series dot-matrix and page-printing products in office and industrial use.
  • Olivetti: Typewriter and Printing Heritage — Olivetti's transition from typewriters to office printers and computing peripherals.
  • Océ: Wide-Format and Production Printing — Océ's wide-format and high-volume production printing heritage and its acquisition by Canon.
  • Kodak: Printing and Imaging Overview — Eastman Kodak's consumer inkjet venture and its commercial/production printing operations.
  • Centronics: Dot Matrix and the Parallel Interface — Centronics' early dot-matrix printers and the parallel port interface that carried its name.
  • Diablo Systems: Daisy-Wheel Printing — Diablo's daisy-wheel printers, the Diablo 630 command set, and its role under Xerox.
  • Digital Equipment Corporation: Printing Heritage — DEC's LA-series impact and LN-series laser printers within minicomputer environments.
  • Wang Laboratories: Office Printing Heritage — Wang's word-processing systems and their associated office printers in the late impact era.
  • Apple: Printer History and the LaserWriter — Apple's ImageWriter dot-matrix and the LaserWriter's role in launching desktop publishing with PostScript.
  • Qume: Daisy-Wheel Printing Overview — Qume's Sprint daisy-wheel printers and their place in letter-quality office output.
  • Tally and Genicom: Line and Matrix Printing — The Mannesmann Tally and Genicom lineage in line-matrix and dot-matrix industrial printing.