The Smart Examiner

If you compare the inkjet printer ink in use today to those that werelaunched some twenty years ago, you will find that they have indeed comea long way since then. Though they arrived in the stores in the 1980s;it was way back in the 1970s, that printer companies recognized the factthat the ink based printers were the way forward and this technologywould be revolutionary in nature. They began the process of developingprinters and printer cartridges. The initial challenge for the companywas not only to concentrate on quality but also on affordability.Siemens invented a popular inkjet printer model in 1977 and it becamequite popular amongst businesses and organizations. The biggest benefitsof this printer were that it sprayed ink only when necessary and werenot very expensive.

A major challenge faced by printer developers with regards to this typeof printers was the fact that the flow of printer ink from the print head to thepage needed to be controlled. This required cutting edge technologicalresearch not only in terms of the printers but also the printercartridges. Initially the dried printer ink clogged the printer head, and eventhe IBM strategy to use electrically charged droplets for coating thepages with ink was not successful and lacked consumer appeal. Thischallenge was tackled by two companies namely Hewlett-Packard and Canon.They introduced the inkjet printer in the market that used liquid ink,held in cartridges. These became vastly popular and this technology isstill in use today.