[HN Gopher] Thunderscan: A clever device transforms a printer in...
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Thunderscan: A clever device transforms a printer into a scanner
(2004)
Author : dtgriscom
Score : 123 points
Date : 2025-10-04 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.folklore.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.folklore.org)
| downboots wrote:
| On the topic of using things beyond their intended purpose:
| kitchen scale + 3D printer = force gauge
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBrPYYRMYM
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness
| gnfargbl wrote:
| 100,000 units sold, software royalty of $7.50 a unit -- I make
| that a little over $2M in today's money. Not bad for what seems
| to have been about two months work.
| relaxing wrote:
| That really is the dream, isn't it. To find work that is
| interesting, impactful, that you are uniquely qualified to do,
| and to be compensated handsomely for it.
|
| It was probably easier to come by in 1987. Nowadays if you have
| a unique idea in computing, there's 40 years' worth of
| computing professionals around to step in and take the job.
| sgerenser wrote:
| When I first saw the $7.50 royalty, I was thinking he'd make a
| decent payday as long as they sell 10K-20K of the things. Very
| surprised they sold 100K seems like a lot for the mid-80s for a
| relatively niche Mac accessory.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Everyone with a Mac had an ImageWriter printer; the scanner
| attachment was, by far, the cheapest way to add scanning
| capability. Many people bought them to add the capability,
| not because they needed them already.
|
| A little later, the LaserWriter printer became the first
| generally affordable laser printer. But it was affordable
| only if you were rich or had a business case for it. The sub-
| thousand dollar laser printer took quite a few more years.
| davidferguson wrote:
| I stumbled across the article about the ThunderScan in about 2012
| when looking for info about ImageWriter II upgrades, and have
| been slightly obsessed ever since. It's such a brilliant idea - a
| higher resolution scanner, that was far lower in cost than its
| competitors, achieved by reusing the paper transport that most
| customers already had.
|
| I'm lucky enough to own two working ThunderScans now (and one
| third one that I needed the software driver from). They work
| exactly as advertised, and it's a joy to see them zip across the
| page, digitising line by line.
|
| The software by Hertzfeld is another joy to use. The scrolling,
| which Hertzfeld calls "inertial scrolling" in that article, is
| now familiar to us all who have used touchscreen devices. It's
| funny to think that the feature that wowed so many at the 2007
| iPhone launch actually existed all the way back in 1984, designed
| by one of the key creators of the Macintosh.
|
| I wish there were more creative hacks like this - I just know
| that if a company tried to do something similar today, the
| printer manufacturer would instantly roll out an update to break
| this functionality.
| cornholio wrote:
| I wonder why the system didn't caught on and why it's not used
| today by manufacturers of multi-functional printers. Seems like
| a huge opportunity to use the existing paper handling mechanism
| - with an autofeeder, a feature most flatbeds lack! - and get a
| more compact device.
|
| The entire device consists of a single, cheap CMOS image
| sensor, a lens focused at a fixed distance and a RGB led.
| Everything else, stitching the resulting scanbands, correcting
| for mechanical and optical distortions, etc. is all in
| software. The native optical resolution you could expect from,
| say, a 1080x720 px sensor would be something like 2400 DPI.
|
| The only downside i can think is that you can't scan IDs,
| passports etc. and the location near the inkjet head tends to
| get dirty.
| poppo wrote:
| You can get cheap, compact scanners that just feed the paper
| through instead of laying it on a flat pane of glass. Almost
| the same thing except not multifunctional and with a page
| width sensor instead of one that would scan back and forth.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Canon tried with some Bubblejet printers, like BJC4300. It
| needed three passes per line (R,G,B) slow and lower quality.
|
| I think also it was expensive, since I wanted to get it, but
| failed to find it.
|
| OTOH, a 10 year old HP multifunction can scan things at
| 600DPI in acceptable quality and detail, in a very reasonable
| amount of time.
|
| If you want to go compact, but fast, there's Kodak Alaris'
| "i" series scanners which can scan both sides at the same
| time. Scan time is ~4 seconds per double sided A5 page at
| 600DPI, and less than a second for ~200 DPI.
|
| That thing _zips_ , but is not cheap.
| VirgilShelton wrote:
| Great, now I learn about this when I used to have printers back
| in the 80's , 90's and 00's!
| sgarland wrote:
| Man, I love stuff like this! The hardware aspect of these things
| is always the most impressive to me. I make plenty of small
| software tools, as I'm sure many HN readers do, but designing and
| building bespoke hardware that interacts with said software is on
| another level entirely - especially considering they didn't have
| 3D printers.
| mjd wrote:
| I had one. It was a great product. I could never have afforded a
| flatbed, but I had an ImageWriter and plenty of time.
|
| Early on I used it to make a picture of Madonna with a fish stuck
| through her head.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Neat! I remember this thing from when I was a kid. We didn't have
| an Imagewriter printer so it wasn't an option for me. Having a
| scanner back in those days would have been amazing.
|
| There is a nice reverse engineering of the Thunderscan here:
| https://beefchicken.com/retro/thunderscan/
| empressplay wrote:
| My school had one, it wasn't perfect and there were occasionally
| gaps between scanned lines but it let us scan in photographs and
| newspaper clippings for local history projects.
| relaxing wrote:
| I definitely downloaded pornography in the 90's with a
| "Thunderscan" watermark on the corner.
|
| Was that a feature of the software? Or did the person scanning
| add it to brag about their rig, I wonder.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Another oddity re. the ImageWriter. There was even a color ribbon
| for the printer as I recall. The early Mac, even though black and
| white, had some very primitive color attributes buried in the
| "Mac Toolbox" (ROM) that, while not allowing you to _display_
| color on those devices, could in fact send simple color to the
| ImageWriter with said ribbon.
|
| I feel like MacDraw (or some other lesser-known app -- not
| MacPaint) exposed this functionality.
| skyking40v wrote:
| I vaguely remember that AppleWriter on the Apple IIe exposed
| the escape sequence it used for character-mode print commands
| like bold and underline to the user. You could change the
| command to escape sequence maps right from inside the program.
| I re-mapped bold to cyan, and underline to magenta just to see
| magic color come from that printer. That one day in 1996 was
| probably the only time that printer ever printed in color, and
| probably my first time to see a printer print in color.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I remember feeling like the color ribbon was so eye-wateringly
| expensive that we bought *one* and kept it in a zip lock bag
| except when we wanted a color print. Usually from The Print
| Shop. I was young (aged 10 - 15), and it probably wasn't really
| that expensive. My parents were willing to help with equipment,
| but we had to pay for consumables ourselves. So any ink,
| floppies, telephone fees for dialing into BBSs were on us, and
| we were as stingy about them as you'd expect from kids with
| limited opportunities to earn money.
| kazinator wrote:
| Should be [2004/1984]
| nityasha wrote:
| Wow, this is a clever hack! Turning a printer into a scanner is
| such a simple yet elegant solution -- reminds me how creative
| people can get with hardware limitations. Makes me wonder what
| other "hidden" functionalities old devices could have if we just
| experiment a bit.
| skyking40v wrote:
| I was aware of Canon's mid-90s attempt at the same thing: Canon
| IS-32 Color Image Scanner Cartridge.
|
| While the Canon may be the first color-capable unit, it's
| interesting to see it wasn't the first ever!
| D13Fd wrote:
| This whole article great, but the best part is when he just
| casually drops that he invented inertial scrolling 20+ years
| before the iPhone.
| brianpaul wrote:
| IIRC, one of the 8-bit Atari magazines had an article describing
| a similar setup back in the mid/later 80s. Basically, put a
| photoresistor in a shroud (I used the cap from a Bic pen and some
| electrical tape), attach it to the dot matrix print head and wire
| it to the Atari joystick port's analog/paddle input. Place a
| bright light over the printer. Then the software told the printer
| to move the print head back and forth while it read the port
| value. The image quality was terrible but it was a fun project.
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