ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Printer (publishing)

Printers are machines that can take digital pictures and words, and turn them into real physical things that you can hold and touch. Just like how you can draw a picture on a piece of paper with your crayons, a printer can take a digital picture and print it out onto a piece of paper.

Publishers use printers to make lots of copies of books, magazines, and newspapers. They type out all the words and create all the pictures on a computer, and then send that information to the printer. The printer then takes that information and prints it out onto paper.

Printers can be big or small, and they can print in black and white or in color. Some printers can even print on things like stickers or t-shirts! But no matter what kind of printer is used, they all work the same way: taking information from a computer and turning it into something you can hold in your hand.