Which one came earlier, inkjet or laser printer?

There are two types of mainstream consumer printers: laser and inkjet. Which one do you think was invented first, the fast and reletavily expensive laser printer, or the “traditional” inkjet ones? to many’s suprise, laser printer was invented in 1969 by Gary Starkweather at Xerox’s Webster research center, nearly a decade ahead of the first inkjet printer. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the first commercial laser printer was created, which was expensive to build and enormous in size.

Then in the 1980s, similar to the development of personal computers, the size of laser printers became much smaller that it could fit on a office desk. In 1984, the HP LaserJet was introduced as a series of small desktop laser printers. Even though it’s still large by today’s standards, it was significant improvement at the time thanks to generational changes of the core of printers. However, these printers were still extremely expensive for an average household, and could typically only be found for commercial use. At the same time, the capabilities of these machines were fairly limited: they could only print on one side at a time at slow speeds, and colored-printing wasn’t available until years later.

Despite the size of laser printers seemed no longer problematic for office and home uses, it was the high prices that concerned the average consumers. People were desperate to find a cheaper alternative to laser printing for everyday usage. In late 1970s, the first inkjet printer was made. In 1984 came another iconic printing device from HP: the colored-printing ThinkJet with a price tag of USD$495, which was at the time fairly easily acceptable for consumers. HP would then start to gradually dominate the printer industry.

Most consumer printers today, whether laser or inkjet, pact functionalities of printing, copying, and scanning, and are often loaded with features such as double-sided printing, wireless connection, and control through mobile phone apps. However, the core of the funcionality of a printer has remained very similar to the early ages of modern printing.