A closer look

Printing a simple text document used to require the kind of heavy infrastructure normally reserved for a modern server farm. The first commercial laser printer, the IBM 3800 released in 1976, was so ungodly huge that it literally took up an entire office floor and needed industrial vents to stop it from catching fire. Now you can buy a sleek wireless printer that sits neatly on your desk and still aggressively refuses to connect to the Wi-Fi.