Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/17/ah-the-sound-of-a-dot-matrix.html
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Its got a good beat; but, maybe, the lyrics could do with a final polish.
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We’ve got that covered:
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Skip to about 5:00 if you don’t care about the technical step-by-step…
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Ahhhhh … Smoke’em if ‘ya got’em.
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I’m wondering what specific model of printer it was. I’m not saying it wasn’t a dot matrix but the LP26 we had attached to our VAX in college was a band printer with fully formed characters and didn’t sound dissimilar to a big dot matrix.
We also had ribbon reinking machines and would reink students’ printer ribbons for $1. Nasty, nasty work. And you could only do it a few times because the ribbon would wear out.
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The last time I saw one being used was at an airport… Maybe at a United gate about 5-6 years ago. Was very confused when I heard it printing, who is using those these days still?
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Could have been a line printer.
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Still good for multi-part forms for work orders, invoices, etc. especially when they’re used to capture a signature.
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I remember being introduced to this band by BB (seems the original post was on Gadgets, and therefore gone).
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Could have been worse…
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How come no short lines? They’re all full-length lines. None of the short “bursts” of sound that you’d get from a real document.
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24-pin NLQ (ha!) matrix printers had a much more refined sound.
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Places that need to produce multipart forms, for legal reasons or because their workflow is still based on paper. Every delivery I’ve ever taken of furniture or appliances, I’ve been asked to sign a “I have received this thing from you” form in duplicate or triplicate, printed on a dot matrix printer. Every bank I have ever dealt with, ditto. Endless examples from bureaucratic institutions.
Besides multpart forms, they are still the cheapest way to print, as long as you don’t care about the output looking pretty. So they get used for bank receipts and such like as well.
The thing is, many modern dot matrix printers have scads of soundproofing built into the printer case (and/or are kept inside a soundproof cubby), so instead of “screech! Screech!,” all you hear is “whirr whirr”, which can fool you into thinking it’s not a dot matrix being used… until you see the printed output.
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