Inkjet Printer

Hello. You might have seen me sitting quietly on a desk in your home, your classroom, or an office. I am an Inkjet Printer, and I think of myself as a quiet artist. My job is to take the wonderful pictures and important words from a computer screen and bring them to life on paper. I do this by painting with thousands of tiny, colorful dots of ink, spraying them so precisely that they form a perfect image. Before I came along, printing was a noisy, clunky affair. My ancestors were loud machines that hammered letters onto paper, sounding like a room full of tiny construction workers. They were great for words, but they struggled with color and beautiful pictures. People needed a way to print that was quiet, colorful, and easy enough for everyone to use. That's where my story begins, with the need for a gentler, more creative way to share ideas.

A tale of two 'aha!' moments

My creation wasn't a single flash of genius, but a tale of two separate "aha!" moments happening in different parts of the world. It all started in Japan in 1977. A clever engineer at a company called Canon, named Ichiro Endo, was working in his lab. He was using a tool called a soldering iron, which gets very hot. By accident, he touched the hot tip of the iron to the end of a needle filled with ink. Whoosh. A tiny drop of ink shot out from the tip. It wasn't a mistake; it was a discovery. He realized that heat could be used to make ink jump, creating a tiny dot on a page. It was a brilliant idea, a new way to print without any loud hammering.

Around the same time, all the way across the Pacific Ocean in the United States, another engineer was thinking about a completely different problem. His name was John Vaught, and he worked for a company called Hewlett-Packard. On the 2nd of August, 1979, he was watching his coffee pot. It was a percolator, a type that bubbles hot water up through a tube to brew the coffee. He watched the steam bubbles form, grow, and push the coffee upwards. Suddenly, an idea clicked in his mind like a light switch turning on. What if he could use a tiny heater to create a tiny steam bubble inside a chamber of ink? The bubble would expand and push a perfect, tiny drop of ink out onto the paper. It was the exact same principle Ichiro Endo had discovered, but inspired by a morning cup of coffee. These two separate moments of inspiration, one from an accidental touch of a hot tool and another from a bubbling coffee pot, were the twin sparks that brought me to life. They proved that great ideas can come from anywhere, as long as you are paying attention.

Splashing color everywhere

With these amazing ideas, my journey into the world began. In 1985, Canon introduced one of my very first relatives, which they called the "Bubble Jet" printer, named after the tiny bubbles that pushed the ink. A few years later, in 1988, Hewlett-Packard released the HP DeskJet, and that’s when I really started to find my way into homes and schools everywhere. Suddenly, the world burst into color. School reports weren't just black and white text anymore; they had bright charts, colorful pictures, and fun fonts. Families could print photos from their vacations right in their living rooms, capturing smiling faces and sunny days on paper to keep forever. Kids could draw pictures on the computer and print them out to hang on the refrigerator. I brought a new kind of creativity to everyone. I made it possible for anyone to be a publisher, an artist, or a photographer. Looking back, I see how I helped people share their brightest ideas and most precious memories. And it all started with a little bit of heat, a few tiny drops of ink, and the big imaginations of people who looked at the world and saw new possibilities.