Archive for the ‘Paper’ Category
There are some terms that come from into the English language as a reflection of the state of the technology when the term was first introduced. Blueprint is one such term. To understand the word, you have to know something about how detailed architectural drawings are reproduced.
Today, making a copy of an existing drawing or document is easy. If it’s a normal letter sized document, you can run off a hundred copies on a Xerox machine in a matter of seconds. If you don’t have a copier, then you can scan it in with your home scanner/ printer and reprint as many copies as you need. The technology is available in most houses around the country. Large size drawings might need a special large format copier or may need to be reprinted with an engineering plotter. Large scale copiers are less common, but still available.
In the old days, when I was first entering the work force, there were no personal computers. There were no CAD/ CAM drawing programs, no scanners, and large scale copiers were rare to the extreme. One of my first jobs was working for an architectural firm as a blueprint maker. At that time, architectural and engineering drawings were universally created by hand. We used pencils or more commonly ink pens to create them on a variety of materials. The earliest ones were drawn on a waxed linen or even a finely processed animal skin. Later, a type of translucent paper called vellum was used, and then a transparent film called Mylar. The translucent and transparent properties of these drawing materials are key to the creation of blue prints.
After a drawing was made, the original hand-drawn design represented dozens of hours of work by a highly skilled professional. If it was damaged or destroyed, it was a significant loss and it would take days or weeks to recreate it. Cheap, expendable copies were required for use on the job site, for customer presentations, or any time when copies need to be delivered to multiple places or exposed to risk. The blueprint machine was the way that these copies were made. Instead of ordinary copy paper, copies were made on a special paper that was coated with photo sensitive chemicals. This paper had to be stored in thick opaque wrappers to keep it from being exposed to light which would ruin it. When making a blueprint, the original vellum or Mylar drawing would be placed over the top of the blueprint paper and the two would be hand fed into a blueprint machine. The machine first exposed the drawings to a high intensity light that would shine through the original drawing and burn away the chemicals from the blueprint paper. The dark lines drawn on the paper would block the light, leaving the chemical coating intact only where lines were drawn.
The chemical at this point was light greenish-yellow color and barely visible to the naked eye. As the exposed blueprint paper came out of the machine, the blue print maker would separate the two sheets and feed the blueprint paper into a second set of rollers while taking the original drawing and setting it aside. The second step involved exposing the blueprint paper to ammonia fumes. The ammonia would develop or cure the chemical coating on the blueprint paper and turn it deep blue making it highly visible. Thus, the copies were called blueprints.
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Two of the products that I most dread buying are printer ink and thermal paper rolls for POS machines. Both of these products come in a wide variety of different brands, sizes, or price ranges that make it difficult for me to find what I need with any assurance that it’s the right thing, or any assurance that I’m not overpaying when a substitute product would do just as well for less money.
When I need thermal paper for the cash register and credit card machines, I can’t afford to run out or my business slows down and stops. Going down to the local business supplies superstore is always a guessing game; will they have the paper I need in stock? I have a cheat sheet with the sizes of the rolls that will fit my machines that I have to take with me every time I go there. Then I have to peer through my reading glasses to read the numbers off box after box of thermal paper rolls to find the one with the matching measurements. It takes forever, but when it’s all said and done at least I know it’ll fit.
Inkjet printer ink cartridges are even worse. Inkjet printers have model numbers like 4218J and ideally, you would look on the ink cartridge box and it would say this ink cartridge fits printer model number 4218J. Unfortunately, that would be too easy for the customer. Instead the cartons provide the helpful instructions such as fits series 3000, 4000, 5000 while another says fits J series printers. So which one do you pick? Assuming I am picking the right one, the price tag to replace the five different color ink cartridges in the printer cost more than the printer did. It would be more economical to throw away the printer and buy a new one that comes with a set of cartridges in the carton.
There are ink refill kits available if I want to use some kind ink filled syringe device to squirt new ink into the old cartridge, but who has time for that. It certainly sounds like a messy process. In any case, every computer printer manufacturer is apparently a reformed drug dealer. First they give you a cheap printer with an initial fix of ink, then you’re hooked and you have to keep coming back to them for more ink no matter what they charge. They know they’ve got you, and it’s all perfectly legal.
Thermal paper, of course, is much cheaper. The prices are regulated by competition. I can buy paper from a number of different manufacturers and as long as the size of the roll is right, it’ll fit and it’ll work. That’s call the free market system and fair competition. With printer ink cartridges you’re at the mercy of the monopolist who sold gave you the printer.
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