IBM 3800

The IBM 3800 was a continuous forms laser printer designed and manufactured by IBM. It is significant as a product because it was:

The IBM 3800 was developed and manufactured in San Jose, California. Production was transferred to Tucson, Arizona in 1980. It was also manufactured in Järfälla, Sweden.

Development began in 1969 using a project code name of Jubilee. Later, the code name was changed to Argonaut. IBM did not however have a xerographic printer to base the Jubilee on (all printers up to this point were chain printers). This meant prototyping used an IBM Copier I which was not capable of anywhere near the product goal of 1 million pages per month. Therefore, dramatic developments were required in areas such as: paper path handling, lasers and optics, toner fusion and control electronics.

There is some dispute whether the IBM 3800 was the first commercially available laser printer or whether this distinction should be held by the Xerox 9700. The IBM 3800 first shipped in 1976 while the Xerox 9700 shipped in 1977. Another distinction between the two products is that the Xerox 9700 was a cut sheet laser printer while the IBM 3800 used continuous forms.

There were several models of the IBM 3800 Laser Printer.

The model 001 was announced on April 15, 1975 and first shipped July 1976. It had a print resolution of 144 pels per inch (or dots per inch, pels are print elements) vertically and 180 pels per inch horizontally. It could print at 10,020 to 20,040 lines per minute depending on line density (which could range from 6 to 12 lines per inch).

The model 002 was announced in 1979. It was a model 001 printer that had been modified to allow it to print kanji characters.

The model 003 was announced November 1, 1982. The three main goals of the model 003 were:

To improve the resolution a new photoconductor material had to be used in combination with a specially designed digital voltmeter and a significant re-design of the laser print head. The helium-neon laser developed for the model 001 was retained, but lens were used to generate two printing beams that reflected off a slightly slower rotating mirror (the mirror in model 001 rotated at 15,300 RPM versus the model 003 which rotated at 12,700 RPM).

The model 006 was announced on January 26, 1987 and shipped later that year. It was functionally identical to the model 003 but only ran at 134 pages per minute. It could be upgraded to a model 003.

The model 008 was physically similar to a model 003 but supported double byte character set, which allowed kanji characters to be printed (effectively making it a replacement for the model 002). In comparison to the model 002 it could print three times more kanji characters (22,500) with significantly better print resolution.

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