Our old ancestors printed on thick silk through a piece of carved clay plate, coated with ink. Later, Bi Sheng of the Han Dynasty invented movable type printing, which greatly improved the efficiency and lowered the cost of printing.
In modern times, the American - Christoph Larsen-Scholes - drew on movable type and invented the typewriter, where the 26 letters of the English alphabet are linked by a keyboard to a corresponding character mold, which strikes the characters onto a ribbon.
Then later, with the development of electronic computers, printers came into being, which can be processed by the computer electrical signals, decoded to generate the printer can recognize the pixel points, the output of the print out, so as to form the image that people want to get.
So, from the original antique printing, to the current printer, the printer, both efficiency and cost are not what they used to be.
What we usually call a printer is a device that takes visible data such as text or pictures from a computer or other electronic device and outputs it through a printer and so on, rendering it on a record such as paper.
But today's printers can do more than just print content records on paper.
There are printers that print food patterns, printers that specialize in printing cake or coffee patterns.
There are 3D printers for printing all kinds of modeled parts, and the use of 3D printers in medical applications is becoming more widespread. The medical 3D printers that print various organs of the human body and print bones are the most widely used and mature. In addition, there is also the world's largest raw material factory for printing artificial bones in Panjin, Liaoning province.
A few years ago, it was reported that a real estate company was developing technology to directly print houses, and gradually put it into use.
Perhaps in a few years, the word "printer" will be dusted off in the archives of history, but mankind will never stop inventing more and more advanced and convenient.