Patent ID: 8026938

Claim:
A thermal printer comprising, a thermal head enabled to be driven by segmenting multiple heating elements into one or multiple blocks according to a quantity of the heating elements to be driven, the heating elements being connected with one another in the form of a line and allowed to be energized simultaneously; a paper carrier for feeding paper to the thermal head; a power feeding section for feeding power into the heating elements of the thermal head, with respect to each of the blocks being segmented, and a controller for controlling the paper carrier and the power feeding section, wherein, without changing a width of one line in a paper feeding direction, in response to one directive of power feeding for one line, the controller forms multiple dots in the paper feeding direction in one line, in such a manner that the number of dots positively correlates with a division number corresponding to the number of the multiple blocks being segmented, the paper carrier changes, with respect to each line, a dot pitch of the multiple dots in one line of a length in the paper feeding direction, in such a manner that a product of the quantity of dots and the dot pitch agrees with a width of one line in the paper feeding direction, and the power feeding section feeds each of the dot pitch in one line, allowing an energization amount of a former dot pitch to be the same as or larger than the energization amount of a latter dot pitch.