The First Inkjet Printer Was a Medical Device

My (very sad) inkjet story:

I bought one of the first consumer HP Thinkjets - the ones with the font cartridges. I plugged it all in, but could not get get it to work. Phoned the supplier, who were useless (of course) and then just sat looking at it. After about two hours, I worked out that I had not actually switched it on. I was used to things having a switch next to the power supply. The thinkjet had one artfully hidden under an overhang (so not visible to the user) at the front.

I suppose I learned three things from this:

- turn it on

- RTFM

- despite all, I still and always have liked HP printers - I have color laserjet now

the title led me to the notion that all digital output devices are printers, sound bieng one dimensional, or two linked one dimensional signals that can become three dimensional after analog conversion, same with light, and two dimensional for paper, 3 dimensional for cad/cam, 4 for guidance and navigation, where we get people vandalising/graphiti on maps and charts and ship navigation systems......somewhere, it must be true, some civil engineer or town planner is slowly and stelthly embeding something rude and funny into the real built landscape, printing it.

I can still remember when the first inkjet printers came onto the market as the successor to dot matrix printers. I wanted one because, as a child, I thought it would allow me to imitate my handwriting with a fountain pen and I would never have to write my homework by hand again...

Fun fact: So was the first chainsaw.