A spark printer is a thermal transfer printer. It uses
a special kind of paper that is coated with aluminum on top of a black
backing. Two styli move across on a moving belt at high speed using a pulsing
current to print on the paper. You have to use the special metallized paper
to print with this printer and that paper is no longer readily available.
When the cost of most conventional printers was several
hundreds of dollars you could buy this type of printer for less than one
hundred dollars and that was a major selling point.
This is also the type of printer that was used in the
printer of an antique Casio scientific calculator.
more printer terms
