Who would have thought that Inkjet technology is one of the oldest technologies? Yes, you hear right. While the printing industry has only discovered it in the last 20 years, it has been around much longer. Sabine A Slaughter investigates its roots.

The triumphant success that inkjet technology has attained within the last 10 to 20 years is based on science and research covering almost 300 years of history. Although commercialisation and professional availability only cover a short period in history, the principles and basis theories referring to inkjet have been researched more than 200 years ago. The French scholar and cleric Abbé Jean Antoine Nollet already published a report in 1749 on the effects exerted by static charge on a drop. As part of his research on osmotic pressure and only a year after, he invented the electroscope, a device for detection of electric charge, this has only been one of the many discoveries the 18th century had to offer.