As opposed to impact printing, non impact printing is based on physical or chemical phenomena that avoid the moving of selectable mechanical masses, therefore opening the way to higher printing speed, practically unlimited character sets, and full graphical capability.
In the early 70’s, although many candidate technologies were already known (thermal, electrostatic, optical, fluidic…), Bull at Belfort selected a magnetic approach. The reasons for such choice were technical: high speed potential and mechanical robustness, but also corporate: taking into account the important know-how on magnetism available at Bull as a result of its development on mass memory devices (magnetic tapes and disks).
