From ECDL.web

A plotter is a computer printing device for printing vector graphics. In the past, plotters were widely used in applications such as computer-aided design, though they have generally been replaced with wide-format conventional printers, and it is now commonplace to refer to such wide-format printers as "plotters," even though they technically aren't.

Pen plotters print by moving a pen or other instrument across the surface of a piece of paper. Pen plotters can draw complex line art, including text, but do so very slowly because of the mechanical movement of the pens. Pen plotters are often incapable of creating a solid region of color, but can hatch an area by drawing a number of close, regular lines. This was often the fastest way to efficiently produce very large drawings or color high-resolution vector-based artwork when computer memory was very expensive and processor power was very limited.

Early pen plotters, e.g., the Calcomp 565 of 1959, worked by placing the paper over a roller that moved the paper back and forth for X motion, while the pen moved back and forth on a track for Y motion. The paper was supplied in roll form and had perforations along both edges that were engaged by sprockets on the rollers. Hewlett Packard and Tektronix produced small, desktop-sized flatbed plotters in the late 1960s and 1970s. The pens were mounted on a traveling bar, whereby the y-axis was represented by motion up and down the length of the bar and the x-axis was represented by motion of the bar back and forth across the plotting table. Due to the mass of the bar, these plotters operated relatively slowly.

Pen plotters have essentially become obsolete, and have been replaced by large-format inkjet printers and LED toner based printers. Such printers are often still known as plotters, even though they are raster devices rather than pen based plotters. Plotters are used primarily in technical drawing and CAD applications, where they have the advantage of working on very large paper sizes while maintaining high resolution. Another use has been found by replacing the pen with a cutter, and in this form plotters can be found in many garment and sign shops.