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This History of the Fax Machine According to Art

Go ahead, you can do it, no one will see you. It's okay to hug your fax, if you still have one.

 

Funny, just today I was on an appointment and they told me about one of their principals that was still using a computer with a 3.5 floppy drive. He brought the disk to a meeting and one of the younger employee asked him what he had on his desk.  He replied that is was a floppy disk and the younger employee replied, "what is that used for"?  Poor fellow had no clue.

Fax will go that route in the near future.  My son's children will have the same reaction when they enter the work force if they get the chance to see a fax machine.

History of Fax (Condensed)

Facsimile "make similar", "make a copy" was invented in 1843 by Scottish mechanic and inventor Alexander Bain. He received a British patent for “improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs”, and the fax was born.

Alexander Bain's fax machine transmitter scanned a flat metal surface using a stylus mounted on a pendulum. The stylus picked up images from the metal surface. An amateur clock maker, Alexander Bain combined parts from clock mechanisms together with telegraph machines to invent his fax machine.

One of the main applications for fax was that of military use, when we demonstrated the technology we also spoke of how it was first used by the military. In fact the military adopted faxing in 1943 to transmit maps, orders and weather charts during World War II.

It was not until 1948 that the FCC authorized commercial use of fax technology, Western Union then manufactured 50,000 Deskfax machines for use at their offices.The first users of facsimile were newspapers to transmit and receive photos from around the world. The next user of facsimile were the weather services around the world.

Sixty years have passed since Western Union created the Deskfax.  Remember these words, fax is dead, there's no need for fax when you have email. I'll admit that email has taken most of the fax machines popularity away, however there is still some type of fax in every office, whether its a stand alone product, a modem in a pc or a modem in multi-functional copy machine. Need more info, the go here.

Fax Fun

What would we have done in the eighties with out the fax?  Any of you remember the Teli Vaxafax (made in Sweden). Nice looking product and we sold the value of Swedish technology.

I can remember some funny stories about faxing.  Back in the Eighties, we always ran across a rude "gate keeper" when we were telemarketing for copiers.  However, it was not wise to be rude or hang up the phone if we had your fax number (matter of fact, even if we didn't have it we would place another call and just ask for the fax number). We would then take a few sheets of letter paper and tape them together to make a long document, in most cases it was three sheets taped together. We would then dial the number, press the start key, once the paper started to feed (you had to remember that the early fax machines were very slow and only feed one sheet of paper at a time) we would then create a loop in the paper taping the end of the document to the beginning. We would then let the fax do its work.

What happened at the other end was that the fax would continue to receive the transmission until either the machine ran out of paper or the fax was turned off. Can you image coming in the morning and  seeing 500 feet of paper lying on the floor!

Well, it was funny back in the Eighties and we were young and dumb!

-=Good Selling=-

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Comments (3)

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John Saramak posted:

Loved the reflection on the history of fax.  Although this was a relatively low residual product it offered a new way to get in the door.  In the 80's, I would follow the fed ex delivery driver who often was delivering some printed pages (agenda's, schedules, documents) that needed to be there next day or sooner.  It was an ear opener when you tell them you can them there next minute without the $12.00 fedex charge.  Using afterhours timing for reducing long distance charges helped separate yourself.  Good old days, and good days there were.

@John Saramak now that's a cool plan! Follow the fedex driver, wish I could have thought of that one.  Could only image how much more successful we could have been in the eighties if we were able to share information like this.  Hope all is well with you!

Loved the reflection on the history of fax.  Although this was a relatively low residual product it offered a new way to get in the door.  In the 80's, I would follow the fed ex delivery driver who often was delivering some printed pages (agenda's, schedules, documents) that needed to be there next day or sooner.  It was an ear opener when you tell them you can them there next minute without the $12.00 fedex charge.  Using afterhours timing for reducing long distance charges helped separate yourself.  Good old days, and good days there were.

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