Printing, Printing, Printing

Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The earliest known form of printing as applied to paper was woodblock printing, which appeared in China before 220 AD for cloth printing. However, it would not be applied to paper until the seventh century.

Later developments in printing technology include the movable type invented by Bi Sheng around 1040 AD and the printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.

Nowadays most printers we use at the office (and at home) are laser printers. Invented in the 1970s, laser printers were introduced for the office and then home markets in subsequent years by many well-known companies that we will not name here. Over decades, quality and speed have increased as prices have decreased, and the once cutting-edge printing devices are now ubiquitous.Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to define a differentially-charged image.The drum then selectively collects electrically-charged powdered ink (toner), and transfers the image to paper, which is then heated to permanently fuse the text, imagery, or both, to the paper. As with digital photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process. Laser printing differs from traditional xerography as implemented in analog photocopiers in that in the latter, the image is formed by reflecting light off of an existing document onto the exposed drum.

So now you know the history and the inner workings of your printer. So why is it not working? There is only one logical answer....