Sometime around the year 2000 I switched fax machines (remember those?) from one that uses thermal paper to a plain-paper model. In the process of scanning 20+ years of documents, I've noticed that some of the thermal faxes are hopelessly faded, while others are sharp and completely legible. The difference doesn't appear to be attributable to age or storage conditions -- some of the thermals from 2000 are barely more than a blank page and utterly useless, and some of them from 1994 look almost new.
Conclusion drawn, for the day when thermal faxes make their comeback: not all thermal paper is the same.
I usta have one of the thermal IR printers for an HP48. Same deal. You could look in the folder several years later and only have some strips of paper with nothing legible on them.
btw, Jerry Davis bought the printer that I donated to a Michael Porter auction a few years ago to raise funds for him. I bet Jerry still has it. He was going to use it to print out sun or star shots one, or maybe both.
Fax machines are not dead, at least yet. The company I work at has a fax machine that gets daily use. Apparently, folks like the Amish (who we do business with) don't feel the need to upgrade to the 21st century......
Used thermal paper with HP41 and it was ever present that paper from anyone other than HP proved a problem, the letters faded, some quicker than other brands.
I then found a program for Win386 machine for faxing on PC.
It was great because it had an inverse selection for those that sent out black background faxes.
Windows XP has a hidden fax program in folder i386 on some machines.
BTW, Many of the local store and gas receipts fade before I can use them during tax season.
J. T. Strickland, post: 341745, member: 246 wrote: I usta have one of the thermal IR printers for an HP48. Same deal. You could look in the folder several years later and only have some strips of paper with nothing legible on them.
btw, Jerry Davis bought the printer that I donated to a Michael Porter auction a few years ago to raise funds for him. I bet Jerry still has it. He was going to use it to print out sun or star shots one, or maybe both.
J.T. I still have the HP printer, haven't used it in several years. The paper that had blue characters faded kinda quick. I got paper that made black characters and they last good. I have got files out that I did solar shots on and the blue ones are almost white now. The black ones are still ok. It's been several years since I made my last solar observations for direction. GPS is the way I go now. Those solar observations were real good and easy with the Elgin & Noles software in the HP-41 and with the time cube for a time hack just before taking the observations. Can't remember the year I stopped by your place for a short visit. Must be close to ten years or maybe a little less.
Jerry Davis
Jim Frame, post: 341744, member: 10 wrote: not all thermal paper is the same.
Saw a documentary on this some time back. It seems they added BPA as a stabilizer. It seems the thermal paper that fades doesn't contain BPA and is completely safe. The thermal paper that still holds an image is toxic.
I printed out, all the programs I wrote, to thermal paper.
A couple years later I pulled out the folder to re-input some programs, and they were all gone!
That was my backup. :excruciating:
Back in the 1980's we would tape the the thermal tapes three wide to an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and photocopy for the job files, even that isn't permanent as I have seen old copies have the toner flake off (and is the reason electrostatic photocopies were NOT acceptable as a recording medium), but certainly lasted longer than the thermal tpes.
SHG
