In June 1973, a project to promote Japanese-made computers began under the guidance of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and it was decided that Hitachi, Ltd. and Fujitsu would develop a system to rival the IBM370. The H-8276 and H-8277 were developed as line printers to rival the 1403N line printer of the IBM System 370. These printers used a free flying hammer, paper feed by servomotor and a hollow drum. The hollow drum reduced weight, enabling a gate open structure of the drum gate, and ease-of-operation was improved.
The H-8276 had a speed of 1500line/min and was announced in 1975. The H-8277 was developed as a rival machine of the 34311—a printer with a speed of 2000line/min announced by IBM in 1974. Shipments of the H-8277 began in 1976
The H-8276 and H-8277 line printers were developed, using Hitachi's own technology, as successors of the H-8245 and H-8246 which had been connected to the HITAC M Series processing unit. At the time, these were the fastest impact printers in the world, and even today (2005) many are still in operation.
| H-8276-11/12 | H-8277-11/12 | |
|---|---|---|
| Max. number of characters printed per line | 132/160char/line | |
| Printing speed | 1500line/min | 2000line/min |
| Kinds of type | Alphabetic,Numeric,Special symbols,(Kana) | |
| Announcement date | 1975 | |
