In my pandemic purging I came across unused paper for dot-matrix printers. Also in my writing archives were pieces I semi-dated because they were in dot-matrix print. In telling more than one friend about this I was a little surprised to find out they had no idea of what dot-matrix was! They had never seen anything printed in it, nor had they seen that printer paper. I showed it to them & one asked me, seriously, if it had any collector value!
If you are one of those to whom dot-matrix is a mystery – it was the computer printer method before ink-jet became the standard. Wiki says: “A dot matrix printer is an impact printer that prints using a fixed number of pins or wires. The pins strike an ink-coated ribbon and contact between the the paper, so that each pin makes a small dot on the paper. The combination of these dots forms a dot matrix image.”
At that time many publishers refused submissions that were printed in dot-matrix as the print itself can be a challenge to read after a couple of pages. The ribbon ink wasn’t that consistent. I have some things that have pretty much faded, some where the ink has matured to blue, some where it looks as good as the day I printed it out. Much like typewriter ribbons it would wear out but quicker. We got rid of our printed when we moved up to ink jet. Ink jet is faster & not as noisy:-)
When someone doesn’t know who a classic rock group, such as Procol Harum, is, I’m not that surprised but these days there people who don’t even know what a desktop computer is, thanks to their cell-phones. Guys I know with iPads or such don’t even have printers anymore. I show them my flip phone & they are like ‘wow! that’s so retro.’ I wish I had a rotary dial phone to scare them with 🙂
speaking of retro – here’s a poem from the archives –
August 1962 (Broad Cove, Cape Breton)
even though it had rained all night
I didn’t stop to think
just how quickly
I’d be soaked by still dripping fir
as I clambered unsteadily
through the campgrounds’ pine thicket
juggling binoculars in one hand
my life in the other
<>
I was out to hunt spies
to search the ocean for pirates
from my evergreen look out
inconspicuous in a yellow rain-slicker
I exploded stealthily
through the trees
suddenly falling
head-over-heels
ten feet down in terror
of the deadly rocks beneath
that turned out to be
a new york family
spreading their towels
on the beach
<>
their peach-fuzzed son
a few months older than me
was quick to show off
the benefits
of his American education
He’d always felt sorry for King Kong
<>
the very next day
between furtive cigarettes
and timid first wrestling
I tried my best to be monstrous
growling & leaping about
<>
his mother found me a show-off
his father found us fondling
they left that night
<>
at fourteen
he was too old for me
anyhow
September 1973
sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
TOpoet 
So a flip phone is now retro…but for the very young. Many twenty something folk have no idea what a telephone is, meaning one of those old, black rotary ones…things change and old things get discarded much too quickly. It’s like our society does not want to live with the past. We want to live in this ever-changing atmosphere where things are already obsolete by the time we take them home from the store…