Daisy wheel
Updated: 04/09/2024 by Computer Hope
Also called a printwheel and daisywheel, the daisy wheel is a round disk found on typewriters and early printers with all printable characters. When the user presses a typewriter key or the printer receives a command, the wheel rotates until the corresponding character is above an ink ribbon. Once positioned, the letter on the daisy wheel is pressed into the ink, which creates the character on the paper. This procedure is repeated for every character.
Each daisy wheel has a lowercase and uppercase version of all letters, numbers, and other punctuation marks. The daisy wheel would be switched if a different font, language, or other characters were needed.