Thermal printer having expanded character set thermal printhead

摘要

A thermal printer has a thermal printhead having coincident current- activated semiconductor mesas arranged to a matrix, the number of mesas being greater than the number of x and y drive lines. The printhead has a decoder formed thereon and a number of coincident current lines equal to the number of mesas. The input to the decoder comes from the x and/or y drive lines and selects coincident current lines to provide desired characters according to coded input signals.