Brother
More info
- Released
- Website
- global.brother
The Nagoya sewing-machine company whose monochrome laser printers have become the internet's stock answer to "which printer should I buy?".
It started as a sewing-machine repair shop run by the Yasui family from 1908; the brothers of the family gave the brand its name. Sewing machines led to typewriters, dot matrix printers and fax machines, and in 1988 came the P-touch label maker, which put Brother's name on every shelf label in every server room and stockroom.
In the 1980s Brother also ran Takeru, vending machines in Japanese shops that wrote software straight onto a floppy, an app store decades ahead of its time. Today the company is best known for laser printers that don't demand an app or an ink subscription, which is why every printer thread on every forum recommends one, usually adding "it will outlive you".