alt Hacker NewsI think that’s a product of their time rather than the dot matrix tech itself. Paper feeding is hard. Tractor strips made it easier.
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bitwize • today at 12:33 AM
Pen plotters could accept sheets of A4 and very precisely position them since at least the 80s. I'm surprised that dot-matrix printers didn't adopt similar technologies sooner, though it could be because by the mid-80s dot-matrix printers were the budget option, fanfold paper with the tractor strips was still abundant, and it was much easier to just stick with the cheaply manufacturable technologies rather than take the risk of innovation with a product that wouldn't sell upmarket anyway.
Dot Matrix are still used in outdoor / high humidity environments in USA.
A lot of car shops with regular 100% humidity conditions will swear by dot matrix + tractor for feeding paper + printing. Plus, the carbon copy forms are guaranteed to be exact carbon copies which also leads to legal guarantees about copies of paper being provably exactly the same in the court of law.