Posted on 01/31/2005 9:32:24 AM PST by pageonetoo
If you were to toast the most dazzling gadget in your home, you might compose an ode to your plasma TV, recite a limerick about your computer-controlled telescope, or maybe sing the praises of your video conferencing, nose-hair-trimming espresso maker. But the invention most deserving of your adoration, the contraption that will one day sit in the pantheon of great American machines alongside the telephone and the transistor radio, is something far more prosaic. It is the inkjet printer, and it is much more than a peripheral. Its core technology may seem simple—an array of nozzles that moves back and forth, depositing tiny droplets of ink on paper—but its breadth of uses has turned out to be nothing short of astonishing, so much so that the humble inkjet is driving innovation in disciplines from aerospace engineering to pharmacology.
...Corporate bosses aren’t the only ones smitten. Piggybacking on industry advances in printing speed and nozzle size, some researchers are using souped-up inkjets to print full-scale homes, others to stamp out skin grafts. In the future, scientists may deliver inkjet-printed nanomachines, targeted cancer treatments and, who knows, maybe even inkjet-printed pets.
So go ahead and worship your shiny new MP3 player, your ionizing hair dryer, your remote-controlled ottoman—whichever machine has you mesmerized this month. But then please take a moment to give props to your workaday inkjet, which has thrived in near anonymity lo these many years. Accolades or no, it’s sure to keep spitting out impressive results with elegant simplicity for decades to come.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
Somebody doesn't understand technology very well.
I've still got a functioning HP DeskJet, which ws once connected to my home network. My daughter used it, with an old Mac, now on the shelf.
My first introduction, to the computer, was a WW2 Mark 1A... analog! Lots of dials, cranks, cams, gears, and rollers, connected to a gyroscope, a radar unit, a rangefinder, and a servo system, to aim the guns! It worked...in 1966! I've always considered digital computers to work by "magic" ro some form of sorcery!
this is not me...
So do I. It's four years old. That's not "decades".
People thought the same thing about floppy disks - they would be around forever. But they went from 8"" to 5 1/4" to 3 1/2". Four of my computers don't even have floppies anymore. Don't miss 'em.
There will be something new to replace Inkjets.
The original HP Deskjet came out @ 14-15 years ago.
The trademark is still used I think.
The original HP Deskjet came out @ 14-15 years ago.
The trademark is still used I think.
Sadly, my digital camera uses them. It's only 7-year-old technology...
Which is exactly my point. Not that an individual specimen won't work for 20+ years, but that the technology in general won't be on top of the heap for that long.
Did you read the whole article? The technology of a single machine is not what it is about, but the doors that have been opened! Who knows about the future? Certainly you can understand that!
Inkjets are ok, except that the manufacturers code the ink cartridges to expire.
I've had that with both Cannon and Lexmark. The Lexmark, I used maybe, 100 printed sheets, and it showed the cartridge as needing replaced, and finally quit anyway. The carriage jammed every time it was turned on. I got more prints out of the Cannon, but their cartidges just didn't last either.
I don't do that much printing. So, after the Lexmark quit, I bought a laser. I don't have color, but still get to print when I need to. Lasers are getting cheap enough to be worth it, when comparing the supplies cost.
No, I commented on a single sentence from the excerpt you provided.
Let's hear it for my old Apple Stylewriter!! Sill going strong.
I got one to replace my HP... but now have hp again (officejet 5510 all-in-one). I can refill the bottles, still. I bought a Lexmark, but shiite-canned it for the HP! It didn't matter how much ink I re-installed, their chip kept the refills from working...
The inkjet manufacturers make their money on the cartridges not the printers. That is why you can buy a printer for less than the replacement cartridges. Kind of sucks. I would rather pay more for the printer and less for the cartridge. I think if lasers keep coming down they will be a better buy than inkjets. However, the article wasn't about injet printers so much as it was about the technology I.E. piezoelectric devices used in other inventions.
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