Line printer

"Bar printer" redirects here. For the similarly named type of printer, see barcode printer.
"Wheel printer" redirects here. For the similarly named type of printer, see Daisy wheel printer.
IBM 1403 line printer, the classic line printer of the mainframe era.

A line printer prints one entire line of text before advancing to another line.[1] Most early line printers were impact printers.

Line printers are mostly associated with unit record equipment and the early days of digital computing, but the technology is still in use. Print speeds of 600 lines per minute[2] (approximately 10 pages per minute) were achieved in the 1950s, later increasing to as much as 1200 lpm. Line printers print a complete line at a time and have speeds in the range of 150 to 2500 lines per minute.

Some types of impact line printers are drum printers, band-printers, and chain printers. Non-impact technologies have also been used, e.g., thermal line printers were popular in the 1970s and 1980s,[3] some inkjet and laser printers produce output a line or a page at a time.

  1. ^ "Speedy Computer Printer Developed by Scan-Optics". The New York Times. August 26, 1971. p. 57. Scan‐Optics, Inc., of East Hartford, Conn., announced yesterday that it had developed a new high‐speed line printer for computers using a non‐impact technique.
  2. ^ "IBM 1443 PRINTER for 1620/1710 Systems" (PDF). IBM Systems Reference Library.
  3. ^ "HP9866 thermal line printer".