Preserving Thermal Printouts

[Matt Agajanian]

Hi all. Just curious. With models such as the 19C, 46, 91, 97, etc. as well as HP-82240, thermal printouts will fade out at some short point. So, I’m thinking that before you do anything, get on a copier and dupe the strips onto a more permanent medium. So, I’d be interested about how members here handled the situation before copiers were a household item.

Thanks

[trojdor]

I taped several strips onto a letter size piece of paper, and used the photocopier at work.

Copiers may not have been household items back then, but every business starting around 1960 had a Xerox.

But you are correct about the temporary nature of thermal prints....include store receipts.
They fade extremely fast.


mike

[SteveC]

Scanning to PDF with OCR enabled is my preferred way of preserving thermal print today. I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap. If you do not have a scanner, there are picture to PDF apps for many phones available. Back in the day, we just knew that thermal print was quite temporary unless preserved another way. I remember seeing keypunch bins with thermal print getting digitized manually in the mid 80s.

-SteveC

[Duane Hess]

Well SteveC beat me to it.

Most all libraries have copy services available. Here in Nebraska its about 15 cents a page; which is a bit much to me.

I have a very old Canon scanner (15 yrs?) from expense-Bay (fortunately on the cheap). There are many units listed, most all antiquated, but lets face it, if it has a USB interface, you can likely use it with most any free-bee software. Most any old brand of scanner is good enough for thermal printouts, most all documents, books, etc. What old scanner can't do at least 300x300DPI? (or 600x600)

I've kept thermal printouts for about 10 years by the "scrap book" method. Flatten them out and put in folders or tape them to writing paper first. Basically flattened and sandwiched in whatever format. Stuffed in a drawer/shelf away from sunlight and in household environmental conditions.

However, would have to admit I've never intended to keep a printout into perpetuity. Just try to keep the equipment running that long.

[David Hayden]

Oddly enough, I have several 40+ year old thermal printouts that still look just fine. They've been inside a 3-ring binder for all that time. On the other hand, I also have recent store receipts that seem to fade after a year or less.