Yeah, we really took this original post off script...while we're at it...
I owned an Epson 9-pin dot matrix printer in the early '80s when I worked at Computer Baron in Costa Mesa, California, where we repaired such printers (like Okidata, Brother, Epson, etc.) by replacing the print head. A major increase in technology is when we went from 9-pin to 24-pin.
This was when WordPerfect (WP) wrote drivers for every printer and took advantage of all of its features down to their embedded fonts. This was before Microsoft killed WP with Windows, sent every font as bitmap (later developed TrueType Font to compete with Adobe PostScript), and moved printer driver development from the Utah based WP software company to each printer manufacture's hardware division who were not up to speed in how to write software printer drivers for Windows.
I created the tightest font so I could print in hi-res the smallest phonebook to fit into my wallet. Once I had enough handwritten phone numbers in it, I'd update my Borland Quattro (I was against Lotus 1-2-3) spreadsheet and reprinted my phonebook. It was my paper version of the PalmPilot and now the smartphone.