Could it some day be possible for printer paper to have all the necessary ink embedded in the paper so that a special printer would just have to bring only those colors necessary for the job to the surface? I guess you could call it “smart” paper. I was reading somewhere that science is working on a newspaper that could be used over and over again by just plugging it into a computer and that would remove the old news and print the new news on the same paper.
Back in the Dark Ages, we had just this sort of thing. It was called “Thermal Printing”, and it was the invention of the Devil.
Yep, I remember my old Sinclair Spectrum came with a printer that used rolls of paper, a bit like a till receipt roll, that had a silver coating (actually aluminium, I think). The printer burnt this coating away, I think, to produce black print, to the accompaniment of a pungent smell. No colour, though.
There’s a pic of one here.
Yep, I remember my old Sinclair Spectrum came with a printer that used rolls of paper, a bit like a till receipt roll, that had a silver coating (actually aluminium, I think). The printer burnt this coating away, I think, to produce black print, to the accompaniment of a pungent smell. No colour, though.
There’s a pic of one here.
I’ve read of this paper, too. As I understand it, the ink consists of little balls of pigment, white on one side, black on the other, which have a permanent electric dipole moment. Apply an electric field one way, the balls line up black up, apply a field the other way, and they’re white up.
I’m not sure how practical this is, though. If you want a changeable display, what’s wrong with an LCD?
Kind of like NCR encapsulated paper?
The pigment would also have to be safe to touch. I wonder what happens if you get it on your hands?
Reuseable paper doesn’t seem very practical to me at all.
It would cost a lot of money to print those manuals that have pages saying: “This Page Intentionally Left Blank”.