Photos: Smithsonian-worthy printer

Graham Nash is best known for his music, but he's also earned a spot in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History for his work with digital photo printers. In August 2005, Nash and colleague Mac Holbert donated this IRIS 3074 printer to the museum.

Although the printer from IRIS Graphics was designed as a color-proofing device for commercial printing, Nash decided in the late 1980s to experiment with the printer to create large-scale digital photos. He founded a company, Nash Editions, which the Smithsonian describes as the world's first fine art digital-printmaking studio.

Nash and Holbert wrote their own image management software and created a hand-built scanner, the Smithsonian said. They also forced the IRIS printer to do something it was not built to do: print high-quality black-and-white photographs on archival paper. According to the Smithsonian, one example of their determination to make their idea work was to hook up a vacuum cleaner inside the IRIS printer to keep lint flying from the paper out of the ink nozzles.