falter
Veteran Member
I've been googling this and I keep getting histories that reach back before the 1960s featuring commercial products. I'm trying to find the first scanner(s) promoted for personal/home use. Anyone got any ideas on this?
I had one of those when I was young as my first scanner. That plus VGA got me my first experiences with digital photo editing. Getting pieces of wide photos stitched together correctly could sometimes be tricky.Got the original monochrome ScanMan and ISA card and software, if anyone wants it. Took some practice to use.
Is it the Quickie by Vitesse? I used one in high school (1989 to 1991) on an Apple IIgs with Publish It! to add black and white photos for the photocopied school newspaper.I have a handheld scanner for the apple iie (forget the brand). Its just so absurd Ihad to buy it.I think its from around 1986. Id have to check.
I think its from around 1986. Id have to check.
I owned a send-only flatbed fax device in the 80s. Odd thing was that the PCB had pads for the scanner output, but were unpopulated. I suppose that fax machines in general would qualify as scanners and thus predate the PC.
DEST PC Scan , ca 1987. It was one of the first non-toy ie. "thunderscan" scanners with software for the Mac.I've been googling this and I keep getting histories that reach back before the 1960s featuring commercial products. I'm trying to find the first scanner(s) promoted for personal/home use. Anyone got any ideas on this?
you can find a review of all of the scanners available in 1987 here
I read online these can do 300dpi but the one at my school had this horrible 'bayesian dithering' that made every photo looked like it was enlarged from a newspaper.
This is really where it ends up, isn't it?Limited RAM and CPU performance was kind of a killer, though.
I'm kind of surprised someone didn't rig up a rudimentary scanner during the S100 years. They managed to get a digital camera (the cyclops).This is really where it ends up, isn't it?
Looking back, I just realised that this 1980 S-100 bus image capture system is, from a hardware point of view, pretty much exactly the same as my current book scanner: a camera and a frame buffer. Only mine has about two million times as much memory for the frame buffer (and of course the hardware to which the image is transferred for processing has many, many times more than that).
This is, of course, comparing my modern system to the base 32 KB CAT-100/A, at $1895 ($7200 today). You could come somewhat closer to modern capabilities with the 6-board CAT-800/A system, with a massive 256 KB of memory, for $7850 (~$30,000 today).
I got one of those and the 256 color one I think. There was a third-party software package you could buy called Halo Desktop Imager that would stitch together your scans.Got the original monochrome ScanMan and ISA card and software, if anyone wants it. Took some practice to use.