Although I cannot recall reading anything to this effect, it
seems that the desire of the Japanese to use their own
written language encouraged the development of facsimile
("fax") and 24-pin dot-matrix impact printers.

In short, facsimile developed rather slowly, until about the
same time personal computer scanners and printers became
affordable.

I understand that handwritten business communications are
quite commonplace in Japan, or were, until recently. It makes
sense to me that fax. would be welcome, making hand-carried
messages no longer routinely necessary (f at all).

Although the early fabric-ribbon impact printers had only
7 pins in a column, and later 9, the later and more-developed
ones had 24 pins in a column.

Why 24? Fewer is easier. However, for the subset of kanji
defined for everyday use, apparently 24 pins is the fewest
that can print acceptable kanji. Advances in electronic
technology made 24-pin printers affordable.

Contemporary inkjet and laser printers are a different story;
I'm just about completely sure that what they actually print
is a graphic image, even if it's pure text. The image has to
be sent to the printer in stripes, one stripe per pass of the
printhead, so the number of nozzles doesn't really matter;
however, it is typically at least 40, afaik, and some (Xerox)
might be in the low hundreds.

Btw, katakana can be rendered with a 7 x 9 dot matrix, fairly
sure, and maybe even with a 5 x 7.

(A book* about the Fifth Generation Project in Japan
maintained that its real intention was to facilitate use of
Japanese in computers, to make use of it as easy as English.
The book contained what seemed to me a quite good, if
concise, introduction to written Japanese.)
*J. Marshall Unger, The Fifth Geneneration Fallacy...
NY, 1987, OUP

[Some fax. history:
Facsimile goes back to the 19th century, I'm fairly sure. In
the 1920s, probably ('30s?), drum scanners for wirephotos
were developed, and Telautographs were in use many decades
ago. (I remember seeing the latter in Grand Central Terminal,
NYC.) Finch Facsimile (before 1952) was to be a small
business and home system, but never succeeded. Western
Electric had a system in use for decades.]

Regards,

Nicholas Bodley ||@|| Waltham, Mass.
Sent via TheWorld.com
Grand Central Station is a post office.