Well I'll bet '79 was before a lot of the IP folk were born... And at my previous job we had 'dot matrix' printers (for a really old legacy system). Some company would just refurbish them and give you a refurbished one for trade-in when yours broke... And I know about that email printing out thing. I never understood that behavior as 99.99% of emails weren't worth saving anyway. In regards to the awful sound, the tried and true method is to unplug the stupid thing. Works EVERY time.
It's Amino world without Chemists