On Sun, 2024-04-14 at 13:15 -0400, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > The printer I was describing sounds a lot like the Versatec ones you > mentioned, including the funny paper and smelly toner. But it was > actually made by Varian, and the driver tells me it had 1408 pixels > across the width of the paper, so at 11 inches wide that would make > it 128 PPI. I wonder if I still have a sample page or two from that > printer.
American Geophysical had a fleet of trucks fitted with hydraulic "thumpers." They would go out to a potential oil or gas field, lay out a few thousand feet of cables with geophones on them, and drive around thumping the ground. Within the truck, they had Varian V70 computers with microcode to do Fast Fourier Transforms. They also had Varian electrostatic printers fitted for 36-inch paper on hundred-foot rolls. I never visited one, so I don't know whether they had funny paper and smelly toner.
