[fa.laser-lovers] DEK's printer

laser-lovers@uw-beaver (07/07/85)

From: Bernie Cosell <cosell@BBN-LABS-B.arpa>

While all the rest of us feel pretty happy just to have access to 
a printer capable of 300 dpi, I seem to recall some time back that
Don Knuth was doing his hacking on a printer that had some
spectacular resolution (2000 dpi?  maybe more?).  Is (was) that true?

If so, I was just wondering if anyone knew what that engine was.

   /Bernie

>Date: Sat 29 Jun 85 00:27:41-PDT
>From: David Fuchs <DRF@SU-SCORE.ARPA>

Prof. Knuth is currently using an Imagen 8/300 for initial font testing,
and an Autologic APS-micro-5 for final hi-res tuning.  The APS is 700
or 1400 dots/inch, depending on how it's used.  In the past, we used
an Alphatype CRS, which had a nominal resolution of 5333 dots/inch, but
it turned out that there was so much distortion in the character shapes
it produced that the claim of super-high resolution was ridiculous.
Note that both the APS and CRS are not laser printers: they both have
CRTs that are focused on photographic paper through reducing lenses.
The amazing thing about the APS is that it moves the picture of each
character on the CRT in real time, as the photographic paper whizzes
by, so as to produce a stationary image on the paper.  The amazing thing
about the CRS was that it worked at all.
		-david
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