Due an increasing need for high-speed printers, for faster information processing, Oki Electric started developing a flying belt high-speed printer in 1957.
The flying belt system realized synchronous control of continuous type movement and hammering with timing pulses. Compared to multi-wheel systems adopted in many line printers at the time, which needed multiple sets of types corresponding to the character/numeral portion of 1 line, the flying belt system needed only 1-2 sets of types.
Oki had received guidance on printer drive circuits from Communications Research Center of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, and had enlisted the cooperation of Eiichi Goto of University of Tokyo regarding control equipment employing 2-frequency memory core.
This belt printer was exhibited at Automath59, an international information processing conference held in Paris. During the 10-day conference, it was able to demonstrate continuous operation at a speed of 300 line/min.
| Belt printer | |
|---|---|
| Printing speed | 300–600line/min |
| Characters per line | 120–180char/line |
| Character types | 64types |
| Paper width | 14–20inch |
