Printers
A printer is an electromechanical device that makes hard copies of images, i.e., images written or printed on paper. The earliest printers were simple printers that produced a low-quality copy of your document. However, as computer Research and Development (R&D) has advanced, so has printers' operation and print quality.
Impact Printers
The dot matrix printer was the original computer printer. It operated with a moving printer ribbon in front of an advancing page. The printer head impacted against the ribbon and produced the shape on the paper. These impact printers were very useful as any shape, letter or size could be produced but the quality of printing was low. Often you could see the dots making up the letters. The daisy wheel printer consists of a large wheel on which levers are arranged.
Non-impact Printers
Impact printers are not suitable for quality or colour printing leading to the development of non-impact printers. The ink jet printer has cartridge/s of ink containing the three prime colours of printing, namely, Red, Yellow and Blue and usually a separate cartridge containing black ink. The ink cartridge is positioned in front of a print head.
Laser Printers
A laser printer works in a similar way to a photocopying machine. Inside the printer is a large magnetic drum which rotates. This magnetic drum is connected to the computer and receives the data of what image needs to be reproduced. The digital information is sent from the computer in the form of rows of information. The drum rotates past the four cartridges containing ink of the three primary colours Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black (CMYK). The ink then magnetically attaches to the drum according to the image produced on its surface.