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The Twinriter is a series of impact computer printers released by Brother Industries starting in 1985. The Twinriter had a unique hybrid printing system, combining a daisy wheel, for producing letter-quality text, and a dot matrix printhead, for producing graphics and other symbols not present on the daisy wheel. Brother released only two printers in the Twinriter series: the Twinriter 5 in 1985 and the Twinriter 6 in 1987. Sales of the Twinriter did not meet Brother's projections, and in 1990 the family of products was discontinued.

Specifications

The original Twinriter 5 is a beige impact printer measuring 7.9 by 23.2 by 15.0 inches (20 by 59 by 38 cm) and weighing 35 pounds (16 kg). The printer features a unique dual hybrid printing system, combining a daisy wheel and a 9-pin dot matrix printhead—an industry first. The printer includes both types of printing systems to serve dual purposes: printing letter-quality text with the daisy wheel, and producing graphics and other specialized symbols not present on the daisy wheel with the dot matrix printhead. Other printers on the market featuring only one of the two printing technologies sacrificed one feature set for the other. While many dot matrix printers could produce both text and graphics, the quality of the letterforms produced by all but the most advanced near-letter-quality (NLQ) printers were poor; meanwhile, daisy wheel printers produced letterforms with a fidelity exceeding even the most expensive laser printers at the time, but could not produce arbitrary bitmap graphics and included only a handful of symbols. The Twinriter 5's dot matrix printhead can print up to 140 characters per second, while its daisy wheel printhead can print up to 36 characters per second.

Users can set the Twinriter to operate in one of two modes: DP (data processing) mode and WP (word processing) mode. In DP mode, the printer schews the daisy wheel completely to print both text and graphics through the dot matrix printhead, operating exactly like any other serial dot matrix printer. In WP mode, the Twinriter switches between daisy wheel and dot matrix on the fly, printing the 95 printable ASCII characters on the daisy wheel and graphics and special symbols on the dot matrix printhead. The printer's dot matrix controller supports ESC/P escape codes to control the dot matrix printhead and Diablo 630 escape codes to control the daisy wheel. Popular office suites for DOS allowing users to compose documents with graphics and text using the Twinriter in WP mode in 1986 included Lotus 1-2-3, Enable and Framework; by late 1987, support for the Twinriter was added to several popular word processors including Microsoft Word, PC-Write, and Words & Figures—with preliminary support under the most popular word processor of the day, WordPerfect, in development that year.

As stock, the Twinwriters are designed with a friction-feed platen accepting plain loose-leaf paper up to 16.5 inches in width, one at a time. Brother additionally sold an optional single-bin sheet feeder, allowing the printer to automatically pull in new sheets of paper as needed for multi-page documents, as well as bidirectional (reversible) pin-feed platen accepting continuous tractor-feed paper. In fall 1985, the company introduced a three-bin sheet feeder, with the smallest of the three bins specifically for envelopes.

As with all daisy wheel printers, the included daisy wheel of the Twinriter can be swapped out for another daisy wheel featuring a different fonts, although this interchange had to be done manually by the end user, necessitating pausing the print during swaps. The Twinriter accepts daisy wheel cartridges from Brother's family of standalone daisy wheel word processors and printers; by 1986, the company had 180 different daisy wheels. Most dot matrix printers at the time were capable of printing text in only one typeface of a fixed size, although the Twinriter's dot matrix printhead can print in five different font sizes, including a 24-by-24 character mode, which approaches NLQ printing (from a distance).

The Twinriter 7 was virtually identical to its predecessor except for a faster dot matrix printhead, added support for IBM 5152 escape codes in DP mode and Diablo 630/ECS daisy wheels in WP mode, and a slightly heavier weight to the chassis.

Sales and reception

Brother unveiled the Twinriter 5 in April 1985. It was released to the market in June 1985, at a street price of US$1,295. The company supported the rollout of the Twinriter with an extensive corporate sales program, targeting Fortune 500 companies and leveraging their network of 1,000 dealers to try to win accounts for the Twinriter 5. Despite this push, the Twinriter sold slower than Brother had anticipated. By October 1986, over a year after its introduction, the Twinriter 5 had only sold roughly 1,500 units. Alex Schibanoff, an executive of Brother's Information Systems division, explained in 1986 that a combination of high costs and "the misperception of Twinriter as a sort of strange animal" conspired to keep sales of the printer sluggish. In 1987, Brother discontinued the Twinriter 5 and introduced the Twinriter 6. The latter was discontinued by 1990, having failed to accrue a large pool of supported software.

References

1. ^ Ridington, Richard W. (November 11, 1986). "Brother Twinriter 5". PC Magazine. 5 (19). Ziff-Davis: 212 – via Google Books.
2. ^ King, Steve (November 23, 1987). "Daisy Wheel Drives Us Dotty—A Little Slowly". InfoWorld. 9 (47). IDG Publications: 57–59 – via Google Books.
3. ^ Staff writer (June 1985). "New Office Printer Combines Daisywheel and Dot-Matrix Features in a Single Enclosure". Office Administration and Automation. 46 (6). Dalton Communications: 75 – via Gale.
4. Segal, Hillel (August 4, 1987). "New printer shows 2 heads can be better than 1". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 10 – via Newspapers.com.
5. Sherwin, Richard (February 9, 1986). "'Twinwriter' offers two printers in one". New York Daily News: 2 – via Newspapers.com.
6. Linzmayer, Owen (November 1985). "Print About Printers". Creative Computing. 11 (11). Ziff-Davis: 72–74 – via the Internet Archive.
7. Williams, Stephen (April 22, 1985). "Software for Those Who Hunt and Peck". Newsday: Part III/3 – via Newspapers.com.
8. ^ Stewart, Jon (August 1986). "Twinriter 5". PC World. 4 (8). IDG Publications: 106–112 – via the Internet Archive.
9. ^ Staff writer (November 10, 1987). "Index to Printer Reviews (1984–1987)". PC Magazine. 6 (19). Ziff-Davis: 420–428 – via Google Books.
10. Staff writer (April 24, 1985). "Brothers Joins 2 Print Modes". MIS Week. 6 (17). Condé Nast: 9 – via Gale.
11. Staff writer (April 29, 1985). "Brother's National Accounts Force Formed to Lead Twinriter 5 Sales". Computer & Software News. 3 (17). Lebhar-Friedman: 28 – via Gale.
12. Sorenson, Karen (January 27, 1986). "Brother Hopes to Change Its 'Price-Slasher' Image". InfoWorld. 8 (4). IDG Publications: 31 – via Google Books.
13. Gates, Bruce (October 18, 1986). "Laser printers on way to eclipsing older rivals". National Post: 51 – via Newspapers.com.
14. Meth, Clifford (October 1986). "Understanding the printer plethora". Administrative Management. 47. Dalton Communications: 38 et seq. – via Gale.
15. Shannon, L. R. (August 25, 1987). "Finally, the Right Stuff". The New York Times: C8. Archived from the original on October 31, 2016.
16. Cox, Laura (September 25, 1990). "Service and Reliability: Printers: Brother International Corp". PC Magazine. 9 (16). Ziff-Davis: 373–376 – via Google Books.

• Computer-related introductions in 1985
• Daisy wheel printers
• Dot matrix printers