The VIDEOGRAPH®electrostatic printing process

An electrostatic printing process called VIDEOGRAPH makes use of a special cathode-ray tube for the generation of latent electrostatic images. Television-like signals produce these images on the surface of dielectrically coated paper by means of a special face plate. This face plate contains a large array of finely spaced electrical conductors which permit the transfer of the electrostatic image produced by the electron beam from the vacuum side of the face plate to the dielectric paper in contact with the atmospheric side of the face plate. These images may be developed and fixed in much the same manner as other electrostatic images. Equipment based on the VIDEOGRAPH process has been principally applied to the production of magazine address labels. The developed equipment produces address labels from digital input data at rates up to 14 000 lines per minute. This results in over 1 000 000 labels per 8 hour operational periods. Other equipments include facsimile, digital line printer, and high-speed point plotters. Printers using the process tend to be quiet in operation, have relatively few reciprocating parts, and provide relatively troublefree high-speed operations. The output is limited to a single copy and, to achieve high resolution, rather expensive precision circuits are required.