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It's amazing how much of modern computing infrastructure was inspired by printers. Richard Stallman's almost entire life's work comes to mind.
by foobarian 5y ago
It's amazing how much of modern computing infrastructure was inspired by printers. Richard Stallman's almost entire life's work comes to mind.
- macintux 5y agoAnd laser printing was a key factor in the Mac’s early success.
- smhenderson 5y agoAnd now a favorite goal of small/medium business is to use computers to go completely paperless.
- giantrobot 5y agoConsider big companies before departmental printers. A memo would be typed and then have to go to the reprographics department for copies or typing pool. Anything more complex than a memo would need to go to an outside printer to be typeset and printed. So you're looking at hours to days (weeks in the case of technical documentation) turn around time. All the labor was also very expensive. Departmental printing could cut the turn around time to minutes or hours and reduce the manual labor significantly. This got cheaper and more accessible with desktop printing. While e-mail is often abused anymore it's much more manageable than the reams of paper even relatively small companies had to deal with just to communicate internally.