Need of Plotter
In the mid-20th century when engineers and architects needed a more precise and efficient way to produce technical drawings and diagrams. At that time, before the advent of plotters the technology was not much advance and traditional printers are not much effective and précised for high-quality printing images, maps, charts, diagrams etc. So, the engineers and architects have to use manual techniques such as drafting by hand or using machines like Pantographs, were the primary methods for creating large-scale drawings. These methods were time-consuming, labor-intensive, and more prone to errors. To overcome these problems Plotters are introduced and developed.
One of the earliest plotter was Konrad Zuse’s computer-controlled and transistorized Graphomat Z64 in 1958, also shown at the Hannover Messe in 1961. The first plotter was created by Remington-Rand in 1953. It was used in combination with the UNIVAC computer to make technical drawings.
A number of printer control languages were created to operate pen plotters, and transmit commands like lift pen from paper, place pen on paper, or draw a line from here to here. Three common ASCII-based plotter control languages are Hewlett-Packard’s HP-GL, its successor HP-GL/2, and Houston Instruments DMPL. Here is a simple HP-GL script drawing a simple line:
SP 1; // Select Pen 1
PA 500,500; // Plot Absolute
PD; // Pen Down
PR 0,1000; // Plot Relative
PU; // Pen Up
SP;
What is a Plotter?
Plotter uses multicolored automatic pens to create lines on paper and reads computer orders. It can create charts, maps, graphs, drawings, and more. It uses one or more automated pens to draw a line.
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