Craft Fair Matsumoto 2022 (61)

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[My resume] 24. My first photo-quality printer

Around 1992, an amazing technology was developed in-house. It was a technology for printing color photos.

Until then, photo printing by printers had only the quality of a fax.

The person in charge of development showed me a high-definition full-color printer with a metallic luster

It was an amazing technology. Although it was still difficult to print a single photo with a dedicated system,

the potential of the technology was fully felt.

A project team was formed to commercialize the product, and product planning, development, and printer drivers were the main focus. When we were asked to decide on a name for the product, we proposed Rouge (rouge, red) and

Verde (verde, green), but Verde was decided on because it would be bad to run it in the red.

For previous printers, drivers were necessary, but they could not be said to be part of the product, but for this product, the printer driver determined the value of the product.

A graphics environment is required, so it is unthinkable without Windows.

At the time, the Windows printer driver was in charge of development in the US, but the development of the first Windows printer was difficult, and the number of bugs was not reduced at all, so it was decided that commercialization was impossible.

In January 1993, I went to CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas with the person in charge of the development center,

and had a meeting with a software company that was developing Windows drivers in Oxford, England, and agreed to use them.

It was my first time in Las Vegas, and I stayed at the famous Flamingo Hotel.

After the meeting, I also went to CES, and saw various hotel attractions such as fountains,

and drank free alcohol in the casino, so it was a dream world.

After returning to Japan, I went to the company in Oxford, and proceeded with technical discussions,

and we were ready to launch the product in June of the following year. The product was the "MJ-700V2C," the world's first

photo-quality color printer.

For about three years after that, I deployed the Windows printer driver that the company had created for various products. At first, they didn't release the source code, but halfway through,

they released a part of it, and I was able to do simple color adjustments.

In the meantime, we were able to develop drivers in-house,

and even developed image processing technology that further improved image quality, and our relationship with the Oxford

company came to an end.

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