1403 printers 481

Rich Alderson Siemens had a 2500 Offline Laser Printer, my manual is dated September 1977, that was later badged by ICL as the LPS14 in 1979-1980.

This was a replacement for a line printer and had a variety of fixed fonts for 6, 8 & 12 lpi and 10, 12 & 17 cpi. It used standard (160pp?) listing paper and ran at around 10,000 lines per minute. It also could take a photographic overlay and simultaneously 'pre-print' the plain paper (with a 2nd laser) along with the data. IIRC, you could also define electronic overlays for pre-printing.

You spooled your print to a 9-track 1600 bpi tape in IBM EBCDIC format and then loaded it onto the printer. Multiple copies could be specified in the print, either repeating pages with optional masking (as per cut awy carbons for payslips etc.) or repeating the whole run starting back at page 1.

It was said that various attachments were available for the LPS14 to decollate, cut and fold as part of the print operation, but we never saw them in the UK, as far as I am aware, as it then made it into a 'printing machine' which required a print union operator, rather than computer staddd to run it.

This was the first laser printer that I had seen, and I believe cost around ukp 250,000. It could replace 4-5 standard line printers, but had to be sold in pairs. Whereas, if 1 line printer broke down, you still had printing capacity, if a single laser failed you had none.

I learnt about its capabilities as I wrote the spooler for the GEORGE 2+ operating system (it was a case of find out what it could do from the manual and trial & error - there were no courses available that early), and then implement the software on user sites (British Rail Crewe payroll centre and somewhere in Bradford IIRC).

I have various manuals (both ICL LPS14 and a Siemens 2500), which will eventually be scanned and available on my web site.