History of science and technology in Japan at the Computer Technique Group, Japan, in 1967. The first electronic printer was the EP-101, invented by Japanese company Epson and released in 1968. The world's first inkjet printer was Casio's Typuter, released in 1971. Thermal transfer printing was invented by SATO corporation, a Japanese company. They produced the world's first thermal transfer label printer, SATO M-2311, in 1981. The concept of a single-chip microprocessor CPU (central processing unit) was conceived in a 1968 meeting in Japan between Sharp engineer Tadashi Sasaki and an unnamed female software engineering researcher from Nara Women's College. He discussed the concept at a brainstorming
Sumlock ANITA calculator and took on Kitz as the leader of a project to develop an electronic version of the company's mechanical calculators. To help confidentiality the project was given the code-name ANITA. Since the company had production lines capable of manufacturing precision mechanical parts by the thousand, the first experimental models were mechanical and electronic hybrids. However, these proved impractical and a purely electronic design was pursued. Being the first in the field there were several major technical areas that required considerable development: However, the main constraint was to be the cost of the calculator. The cheapest electronic computer then cost approximately