A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer’s photoreceptor. While monochrome printers only use one laser scanner assembly, color printers often have two or more scanner assemblies.

A laser beam projects an image of the page to be printed onto an electrically charged rotating drum coated with selenium. Photoconductivity removes charge from the areas exposed to light. Dry ink (toner) particles are then electrostatically picked up by the drum’s charged areas. The drum then prints the image onto paper by direct contact and heat, which fuses the ink to the paper. Laser printers have many significant advantages.  The fastest models can print over 200 monochrome pages per minute or 12,000 pages per hour. The fastest color laser printers can print over 100 pages per minute or 6000 pages per hour.

History:- The laser printer was invented at Xerox in 1969 by researcher Gary Starkweather. The prototype was built by modifying an existing xerographic copier. Starkweather disabled the imaging system and created a spinning drum with 8 mirrored sides, with a laser focused on the drum. Light from the laser would bounce off the spinning drum, sweeping across the page as it traveled through the copier. The hardware was completed in just a week or two, but the computer interface and software took almost 3 months to complete.

The first commercial implementa- tion of a laser printer was the IBM model 3800 in 1976, used for high-volume printing of documents such as invoices and mailing labels. It is often cited as “taking up a whole room. While large, it was designed for an entirely different purpose. The first laser printer designed for use with an individual computer was released with the Xerox Star 8010 in 1981. It was very expensive with a price of $17,000.  After personal computers became more widespread, the first laser printer intended for a mass market was the HP LaserJet 8ppm, released in 1984 whose cost was $3500.  Its weight was 32 kg. Now, most advanced version laser printers of branded companies are available at a very lesser prices.