Chapter 194: Only what can be seen on the monitor does not count (3k)

The two were delighted when they heard this. Gao Zhendong's words made it very clear that I would not do this myself, so the computing institute would do it.

It is true that Gao Zhendong deserves the credit for the first achievement, but anything that Gao Zhendong calls "new things" must have never existed before, so there is no doubt about it.

Didn’t you see that neither JP-59 nor XS-59 are called new things?

Although these two are new concept peripherals, Gao Zhendong simply called them "modifications" because one was modified by Gao Zhendong using a TV and the other was modified by Gao Zhendong using a typewriter.

Although the people at the Institute of Computing thought it was a waste, the inventor himself didn't care, and they were too embarrassed to propose it as a new thing.

Now, there is something that Gao Zhendong calls "new", so it must be good. Let's do it.

The two did not ask what it was. Director Li said, "Let's do it. Tell me how to do it!"

That's so real.

Gao Zhendong said with a smile: "Let's get a printer. We already have the editing environment, so it would be unreasonable not to have a printer, haha."

"Printer?" Li and Chi had some idea about this thing but they were not very clear about it. The concept of printers had been around for a long time, but it was not put into practical use on a large scale until relatively late, especially in China.

"Yes, it is a machine that prints the files we edited on paper. It is a bit like a typewriter, so I call it a printer. After all, the files we edited can only be seen on the monitor, which is not very convenient and has a limited range of uses."

After hearing this, the two of them understood and immediately became interested.

Director Li smiled and said, "Hey, this thing is interesting. It can print out the documents we edited immediately. This way, the Chinese editing environment will be more useful."

Chief Engineer Chi also smiled and said, "Director Gao is indeed thinking ahead. We always felt that the Chinese editing environment seemed to be missing something. With this, it feels like a complete editing environment. Editing and printing documents are both indispensable."

After that, the two said to Gao Zhendong, "Director Gao, let's go to the conference room. We'll call a few key members. Tell us your ideas and lead us to build a big project. Haha."

Gao Zhendong thought, what kind of big project is this? The conditions are not ripe now. When the conditions are ripe, I will take you to do a real big project.

The three of them chatted and laughed as they headed to the computing center's conference room. On the way, Director Li called on people in the office to quickly get a few key personnel to come over.

The three of them sat down in the conference room. Not long after, several key members who had received the notice also rushed over.

Although Gao Zhendong knew them all, Director Li still explained: "Director Gao, these are the comrades in our institute who worked with you on keyboards not long ago. Didn't you say that this thing is similar to a typewriter? They have more experience."

Gao Zhendong smiled and said, "Great! The Computing Institute is still strong. By the way, Director Li, call the comrades who make the display over here. In terms of driving, this thing is actually more similar to a display."

Chief Engineer Chi suddenly realized that this was an output device, not an input device. If it was similar to a typewriter in terms of "typing", then in terms of its relationship with a computer, this thing was actually more like a monitor.

He turned around and told the comrade who had just come over and was working on the keyboard to go and call someone immediately.

Not long after, the comrades who were working on the display also arrived.

Seeing that everyone was present, Gao Zhendong gave a brief introduction to his ideas about the printer.

After listening to Gao Zhendong's introduction, everyone felt that this device was indeed a good helper for the Chinese editing environment. Otherwise, they would always feel that the edited files were useless. They couldn't carry the DJS-59 around to show the file contents to people who didn't have a computer.

Seeing that everyone understood what he meant, Gao Zhendong began to explain the main components of the printer one by one.

Although I didn't make printers in my previous life, I still know the basic components of a printer. Maybe the terms used to describe the components are different from those in my previous life, but the meaning is the same.

I invented it, so I have the final say on what it’s called.

What Gao Zhendong wanted to make was a dot matrix printer. Other common technologies such as inkjet, laser, thermal sublimation, and thermal sensitive all had various shortcomings.

The inkjet printer is prone to clogging and the nozzle processing is also difficult under current conditions.

The first laser was still a few months away.

Let’s not talk about the technology of thermal sensitivity. Just the characteristic of disappearing at any time means that the first printer cannot do this because its application range is too narrow.

Let’s not talk about anything else about thermal sublimation, just two words: cost.

Another advantage of the dot matrix printer is that it can print carbon paper, which is very convenient for the office habits of this era. Even in the future, one of the main reasons why the dot matrix printer has not been eliminated is that it is used for bill printing. In fact, the bills it prints are still carbon paper, but it uses microcapsule technology to print the carbon paper sandwiched in the middle onto the paper.

For printing paper media and not requiring high image printing requirements, there is no doubt that dot matrix printers are the most suitable in this era.

Gao Zhendong introduced several major parts of the printer to everyone.

The printing system includes a series of mechanisms such as the print head and color-developing materials.

Positioning control, including positioning control of print head and paper.

The paper feeding system should at least be able to automatically feed paper for single-sided printing.

The control circuit is responsible for communication with the computer and control of each subsystem. In fact, part of this is included in the above systems.

Everyone wrote down their ideas one by one. Gao Zhendong did not give the design directly, but guided everyone to discuss, starting with the most core function: the printing system.

Obviously, everyone has practical experience with typewriters and keyboards. One comrade directly raised his confusion: "Director Gao, you said that you are going to use a principle similar to that of a typewriter, using ribbons to display colors. However, for English letters and punctuation marks, there are only a few dozen fonts to solve the problem. However, there are thousands of commonly used Chinese characters. Do we have to make all these fonts into the printer?"

This is the principle of a typewriter. Each key is connected to the type mold through a connecting rod. The letter is typed according to the key pressed. The key and the type mold are basically mechanically connected and correspond one to one.

This also leads to an interesting anecdote: some people can tell which of several acquaintances typed the letter by the force with which the typewriter's characters hit the paper.

This method is obviously not suitable for Chinese. There is a Chinese typewriter based on this principle, but its structure and usage are difficult to describe. Many characters are missing, and the font size is fixed and cannot be changed.

Just imagine that a typist needs to search for the required words among about 2500 fonts, and you will know how painful it is. To be honest, it would be better to call that thing a movable type printing press rather than a typewriter.

Hearing his question, another comrade said, "That's unlikely. I've seen that thing before. It can be used, but it's far from universal. Could it be using Chinese Pinyin?"

Everyone knows that Gao Zhendong likes to do general things.

Director Li laughed and said, "If that were the case, Director Gao would not have brought it up. It would be meaningless."

Chief Engineer Chi thought more deeply: "Director Gao, could it be drawn with a pen?"

The number of Chinese strokes is limited, and some people have indeed thought of this approach.

But it didn't work because the same stroke of a Chinese character has completely different appearances in different characters, with different angles, positions, inclinations, bending angles, etc. If you force it together, the final typed characters are simply unreadable.

Gao Zhendong shook his head and smiled, "Neither. When I say the principle of using a typewriter, I mean that the color development is based on the principle of a typewriter, by hitting the ribbon in some way to leave words on the paper. But for the printing part, there is only one print head, and its principle is actually more similar to something else."

Chief Engineer Chi remembered what Gao Zhendong had said just now, that the printer driver is more like a monitor!

He suddenly realized: "I understand, Director Gao, you want to use dot matrix to print Chinese characters! No wonder you just said that the printer driver is more like a monitor!"

Now everyone understood. Why didn’t they think of such a simple truth just now?
Once the window paper was broken, everyone couldn't help but admire Director Gao's smart brain, which solved the problem of the ever-changing shapes of Chinese characters.

You come from multiple paths, I go from one path, no matter how many fonts you have, a 16*16 dot matrix print head can solve the problem.

Despite the excitement, some comrades still felt that something was not right.

"Director Gao, even if we use a 16*16 dot matrix, there is still a problem. There are 256 needles in total. Such a print head should be very difficult to manufacture and control. The technical risk is very high."

Gao Zhendong smiled and said, "That's a good question. You have thought deeply about it. However, you don't need 16*16 needles. For example, you can use only 16*1 column and print them separately by shifting horizontally 16 times. If you think the number of horizontal shifts is too many, you can increase the number of columns appropriately to achieve a balance."

As soon as these words came out, the comrade who raised the question slapped his head and said, "Hey, I thought too much, but not enough."

Chief Engineer Chi, who had just thought of this question, secretly wiped a cold sweat in his heart. It was a close call, he almost asked the question.

However, he still raised his own question: "Then the positioning accuracy requirements for the paper and the print head will be relatively high."

Gao Zhendong nodded: "Yes, but under the premise of appropriately sacrificing the printer's accuracy and reducing the dot density per unit size, with the current domestic motor accuracy and the fact that we are focusing on character printing first, it is basically sufficient."

The comrades present thought about it and felt that this seemed to be the case. Although there is no clear parameter to support it yet, according to Director Gao’s plan, only sub-millimeter control accuracy is required, which is not difficult at the moment.

(End of this chapter)