alt Hacker NewsWhile I love the curiosity and creativity that has recently emerged around digital pen plotting, many people may not realize this was the workhorse technology for producing technical drawings for several decades in the late 20th century.[0]
Large format pen plotters with up to 8 separate pens were available for different line weights. Color was mostly avoided because the reproduction process of the time was still centered around diazotype[1], or monochromatic ammonium blue printing.
[0]https://piratefsh.github.io/2019/01/07/computer-art-history-...
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And they were quick about it too [0]. I mean, not that quick, much slower than today's printers, but much faster than nearly all of the 3D printer conversions or pen plotter kits you can get now.
My HP-7470A is from 1982 and does not have stepper motors, but DC motors and rotary encoders doing closed loop servo control. They move the lightweight paper itself instead of a heavy gantry.
Worth noting that this HP sold printers and atomic clocks, unlike today's HP which sells cheaper printers and subscriptions to them.
Growing up my father had a Calcomp plotter for CAD drawings. I think it could handle 36 inch wide paper and had a 6 or 8 pen carousel. The neat part was it had a little air table strip that kept the paper hovering at the edges allowing the page to be rapidly fed back and forth without dragging on the plotter bed. That table had a blower that produced a hum that for a while was a staple background sound to the home computer/drafting/office my father setup.