General Information

Serial #

N/A

Part Number

1

Total Parts

2

AKA

N/A

Patents

N/A

General Description

synthetic

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

N/A

Width

N/A

Height

N/A

Thickness

1.0 cm

Weight

N/A

Diameter

7.8 cm

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Industrial Technology

Category

Office equipment

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Diablo

Country

Unknown

State/Province

Unknown

City

Unknown

Context

Country

Unknown

State/Province

Unknown

Period

unused

Canada

This printwheel was purchased at a Canadian store specializing in office supplies and in printing materials: Willson Stationers Ltd. Founded in1900, Willson is one of theoldest chains of office supply retailers in Canada.

Function

An element of computer printer which printed characters on paper, by means of characters embossed on the ends of spokes of a wheel which were imprinted on paper by means of an inked ribbon. Printwheels/heads stamped characters on a sheet of paper when struck by a hammer. They came in different fonts [e.g. courier, prestige elite, bookface academic], font styles [e.g. bold, italic, regular] and in different sizes [e.g. 10, 12].

Technical

A good example of a printwheel produced for American Diablo/Xerox printers. The daisy-wheel printer was introduced in 1971 by Diablo Systems and shortly thereafter by Qume. In the daisy-wheel system, characters on the ends of petal like spokes radiating from a rotating flat disk were struck by a hammer and imprinted on the paper through an inked ribbon. The technology was used quite widely for operator console keyboards and word processing systems. Daisy wheel printers were prevalent in the 1970s. Consumers began to lose interest in these printers in the mid 1980s when newer technologies such as the dot-matrix, laser and inkjet printers appeared on the market. Another factor in the eclipse of the daisy wheel printer was the fact that the wheels/heads had to be removed manually every time a font needed to be changed, which was time consuming and tedious. Diablo was co-founded by David S. Lee in California. Lee sold Diablo to Xerox in the early 1970s and then founded another daisy wheel manufacturing company called Qume.

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

gold lettering reads '38107-01 Diablo COURIER 72 '

Missing

appears complete

Finish

black

Decoration

N/A