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Weren't they primarily Japan-made at the time? (I imagine that could present a political problem.)

• darreninthenet 2y ago
  Centronics (American...) built the first "true" dot matrix in 1970 although IBM built a line printer that was similar in the late 50s
  • lysace 2y ago
    Ah. That's where the name of that giant connector came from.
    • kens 2y ago
      There's more to the story of the Centronics printer connector. Centronics was a subsidiary of Wang Laboratories, producer of Wang word processors and computers. They had 20,000 surplus connectors from one of their earlier calculator products, so they reused the connectors for their printers, creating a de facto standard. An Wang was one of the inventors of core memory (it's complicated). He sold his core memory patent to IBM and used the money to create Wang Laboratories, eventually becoming a billionaire.
  • jcrawfordor 2y ago
    Probably not a concern in federal acquisition, but it's an interesting point that Centronics pretty much only built the print head and control electronics. The rest was built by Brother in Japan, as a modification of their electronic typewriter mechanism. Printing really was a very Japan-dominated industry at the time. Brother's relationship with Centronics fell apart pretty much one model later, and now Brother is the printer company and Centronics is long gone.