Daisy wheel printer
Overview
Diablo Data Systems
Diablo Data Systems was a division of Xerox created by the acquisition of Diablo Systems Inc. in 1972.It is best known for the Diablo 630 daisywheel printer, but also produced the hard disk drives that were resold by DEC as the RK02 and RK03....
. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to premium typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s such as the IBM Selectric, but two to three times faster. Daisy-wheel printing was used in electronic typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s, word processor
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
s and computer systems
Computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...
from 1972. According to Webster's, the daisy wheel is so named because of its resemblance to the flower
Asteraceae
The Asteraceae or Compositae , is an exceedingly large and widespread family of vascular plants. The group has more than 22,750 currently accepted species, spread across 1620 genera and 12 subfamilies...
.
By 1980 daisy-wheel printers had become the dominant technology for high-quality print.
