The EP-101 was the first ever electronic miniprinter for printing figures and symbols and was launched by
Shinshu Seiki Co., a subsidiary of
Suwa Seikosha Co., Ltd, in September 1968. The
drum printer wasn't very big, being only 164 millimetres in width, 102 millimetres in height, 135 millimetres in depth and weighed 2.5 kilograms. It was created out of development work that Shinshu Seiki did for the
Seiko Group
is a corporate group composed of Seiko, Seiko Group Corporation and its subsidiaries and affiliates. It used to be recognized as a corporate group consisting of three core companies Seiko, Seiko Holdings Corp. (Seiko; f/k/a K. Hattori & Co., Ha ...
when they became the official time-keepers for the
1964 Tokyo Olympic games and needed a machine that could print out times they gathered from their time-pieces.
In 1975, Shinshu Seiki began branding printers as EPSON. The brand name comes from the next generation version of this printer – ''son'' of ''EP'', or EP-son. Shinshu Seiki renamed Epson Corporation in 1982 and was merged with Suwa Seikosha to form
Seiko Epson Corporation in 1985.
External links
The world's first smallest digital printer – and progenitor of Epson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ep-101
Computer printers
Epson