Ever since man got up and off all fours and started walking on two legs he has communicated using some type of image. What started out as pictures scratched upon the wall of a cave initially evolved into images that were made using a burned stick.
Then, as the centuries passed, other types of media were developed that would leave a more permanent record of his existence. And today life would not be the same if we didn't have the capacity to print anything from legal tender to sporting event tickets.
It's highly unlikely that cavemen could envision the importance of printing. It's doubtful that they could ever imagine that tens of thousands of years his descendants would develop both the technology to print massive amounts of data along with his dependence on the printed word.
The first printing presses were developed in the fifteenth century. Guttenburg is credited with building the first printing press in 1452. The ink jet printers that most of us use today weren't invented until more than 500 years later, in the latter part of the twentieth century.
The first dry printing process, known as electro photography, was invented by Chester Carleson in 1938. The more common term for this technology is "Xerox". When Gary Starkweather, a Xerox engineer, added a laser beam to the existing Xerox printer he built the foundation for the laser printers that can be found in most offices and in many homes today.
Subsequently IBM's 3800 Printing System became the first office printer that had the ability to print more than 100 impressions in a minute.
Although laser printers used dry printer inks, it was not the end for wet printing. That's because the original laser printers cold only print in black and white. This left the door open for Hewlett Packard to release its first Deskjet series of inkjet printers in 1978.
Subsequently other companies began to design and manufacture their own versions of printers that could be used as stand-alone printing devices in homes and offices.
Nowadays virtually every printer incorporates the use of replaceable printer inks cartridges. One of the biggest benefits of this type of a system is that the ink cartridges can very easily be replaced when the ink runs out.
Today not only do the original equipment manufacturers offer printer inks cartridges for their printers, third party companies offer them as well. And, in the interest of saving the environment as well as saving money, many people are now buying recycled and refilled printer ink cartridges when the ink runs dry in their inkjet printers.