The History of the Fax
The creation of the fax machine is attributed to Scottish clockmaker Alexander Bain in 1843. The invention is actually 33 years earlier than the patent was awarded for the telephone. Although the fax machine was created in the mid-1800s, it did not gain widespread popularity until the 1980s.
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Origins
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Alexander Bain created the first fax machine by building a machine comprised of two pens connected to two pendulums and a wire that was able to reproduce writing on a surface that was electrically conductive. In 1843, he was awarded a British patent for his new machine.
Telephotography
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The German Arthur Korn invented telephotography in 1902. The new technology, which became known as the photoelectric system, was able to transmit photographs through the use of electrical wires. The first inter-city fax was sent when Korn transmitted a photograph from Munich to Berlin in 1907.
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Facsimile Technology
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The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) produced the telephotography machine in 1924, based on facsimile technology. The technology was used to send photos of political conventions from Chicago to New York for newspaper publication.
Technological Advances
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The biggest technological step occurred in 1966 when Xerox released the Magnafax Telecopier. This was a 46-pound facsimile machine that connected to any telephone line. With this machine a normal document took around six minutes to transmit.
Popularity
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In the decade between 1973 and 1983 the number of fax machines in the United States jumped from 30,000 to 300,000. However, by 1989 there were more than four million fax machines in the United States.
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References
- Photo Credit fax contact image by dead_account from Fotolia.com
