Daisy wheel printing

Daisy wheel printing is an impact printing technology invented in 1969 by David S. Lee at Diablo Data Systems. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to premium typewriters such as the IBM Selectric, but two to three times faster. Daisy wheel printing was used in electronic typewriters, word processors and computers from 1972. The daisy wheel is considered to be so named because of its resemblance to the daisy flower.

By 1980 daisy wheel printers had become the dominant technology for high-quality text printing. Dot-matrix impact, thermal, or line printers were used where higher speed or image printing were required and poor print quality was acceptable. Both technologies were rapidly superseded for most purposes when dot-based printers—in particular laser printers—that could print any characters or graphics, rather than being restricted to a limited character set, became able to produce output of comparable quality. Daisy wheel technology is now found only in some electronic typewriters.

In 1889 Arthur Irving Jacobs patented a daisy wheel design (U.S. Patent 409,289) that was used on the Victor index typewriter.

A. H. Reiber of Teletype Corporation received U.S. Patent 2,146,380 in 1939 for a daisy wheel printer.

In 1972 a team at Diablo Systems led by engineer David S. Lee developed the first commercially successful daisy wheel printer, a device that was faster and more flexible than IBM's golf-ball devices, being capable of 30 cps (characters per second), whereas IBM's Selectric operated at 13.4 cps.

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