Refers to a class of
printers that work by banging a head or needle against an ink ribbon to make a mark on the paper. This includes
dot-matrix printers,
daisy-wheel printers, and
line printers. In contrast,
laser and
ink-jet printers are
nonimpact printers. The distinction is important because impact printers tend to be considerably noisier than nonimpact printers but are useful for multipart forms such as invoices.
