The thermal printer in one form or another has been around for almost two decades. Originally introduced as a cheap and quiet alternative to the popular dot matrix printer.
All thermal printers require a specially coated form of paper on which to print. This paper is sensitive to heat and it is this quality which allows the printer to literally `burn' images onto the paper. There were two forms of early thermal printer, the first contained a column of heating elements, to build a character the appropriate elements would be heated and the paper in close proximity would change colour. The second type was the electrostatic printer, which would heat the surface of the paper by producing accurate sparks from the print head, directed at the paper in such a way as to form characters.
These versions of early thermal printers are very few and far between. Today, the word `thermal' is now used in the context of colour wax printers which melt coloured waxes before accurately spraying them onto paper to form characters and images.
