Dot Matrix Printers

Dot matrix printers were developed during the first decades of 20th century and for decades dominated the office and business printing scene. Their working mechanism was like typewriters as these printers used ink soaked print cloth like typewriter ribbon. Dot matrix printers use a print head moving back-and-forth, or in an up-and-down motion, which strikes on ink-soaked ribbon cloth set against the paper which creates the image on paper. Unlike many other earlier printers, these could print using various fonts, typefaces and supported colour printing. Dot matrix printers dominated until the spread of inkjet printing technology and were the first printers to be used with personal computers in 1970s and 1980s.