Ichiro Endo

Ichiro Endo worked at Canon in Japan and was the first to realize the idea that ink could be heated to form a small bubble, then deposited on a page to form a pixel. He was inspired when he saw a syringe full of ink accidentally being touched with a hot soldering iron. The heat caused the ink to increase in volume and spurt out. Endo realized this was the solution to delivering controlled spurts of ink and within days he produced a working model that later became the Canon Bubble jet printer. At the same time, John Vaught at HP was inventing the same process. The two eventually came to be recognized together for their independent developments. They share a number of awards and recognitions including the Edwin H. Land Medal “for their independent inventions of bubble-jet and thermal ink jet technology which created a new 3 billion dollar printer industry and enabled low-cost and color printers to be attached to every PC.” Their work led to a continued cooperation between the two companies.

Endo passed away in 2016.