Fascinating facts about the invention of the Fax Machine by inventors Alexander
Bain, Elisha Gray, Arthur Korn, and Edouard Belin beginning in 1843.
The use of the fax machine to transmit images via telephone lines did not become
common in American businesses until the late 1980s, but the technology dates
back to the nineteenth century. In 1843 in England, Alexander Bain (1818-1903)
devised an apparatus comprised of two pens connected to two pendulums, which in
turn were joined to a wire, that was able to reproduce writing on an
electrically conductive surface.
In 1862, the Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli built a machine he called a
pantelegraph (implying a hybrid of pantograph and telegraph), which was based on
Bain’s invention but also included a synchronizing apparatus. His pantelegraph
was used by the French Post & Telegraph agency between Paris and Marseilles from
1856 to 1870.
Elisha Gray (1835-1901), American inventor, born in Barnesville, Ohio invented
and patented many electrical devices, including a facsimile transmission system.
He also organized a company that later became the Western Electric Company.
In 1902, Arthur Korn (1870-1945) in Germany invented telephotography, a means
for manually breaking down and transmitting still photographs by means of
electrical wires. In 1907, Korn sent the first inter-city fax when he
transmitted a photograph from Munich to Berlin.
In 1925, Edouard Belin (1876-1963) in France constructed the Belinograph. His
invention involved placing an image on a cylinder and scanning it with a
powerful light beam that had a photoelectric cell which could convert light, or
the absence of light, into transmittable electrical impulses. The Belinograph
process used the basic principle upon which all subsequent facsimile
transmission machines would be based. In 1934, the Associated Press introduced
the first system for routinely transmitting "wire photos," and 30 years later,
in 1964, the Xerox Corporation introduced Long Distance Xerography (LDX).
For many years, facsimile machines remained cumbersome, expensive and difficult
to operate, but in 1966 Xerox introduced the Magnafax Telecopier, a smaller,
46-pound (17 kg) facsimile machine that was easier to use and could be connected
to any telephone line. Using this machine, a letter-sized document took about
six minutes to transmit. The process was slow, but it represented a major
technological step. In the late 1970s, Japanese companies entered the market,
and soon a new generation of faster, smaller and more efficient fax machines
became available.
HOW IT WORKS:
Facsimile Transmission, or fax, communications system for the electrical
transmission of printed material, photographs, or drawings. Facsimile
transmission is accomplished by radio, telephone, or undersea cable. The
essential parts of a fax system are a transmitting device that translates the
graphic material into electrical impulses according to a set pattern, and a
synchronized receiving device that retranslates these impulses and prints a
facsimile copy. In a typical system the fax scanner consists of a rotating
cylinder, a source projecting a narrow beam of light, and a photoelectric cell.
The copy to be transmitted is wrapped around the cylinder and is scanned by the
light beam, which moves along the cylinder as it revolves.
The output of the photoelectric cell is amplified and transmitted to the
receiving end, where a similar cylinder, covered with specially impregnated
paper, revolves in synchronism with the transmitting cylinder. A light of
varying intensity moves along the rotation cylinder and darkens the paper by
chemically reproducing the pattern of the original.
FUN FACTS:
• Between 1973 and 1983, the number of fax machines in the United States
increased from 30,000 to 300,000, but by 1989 the number had jumped to four
million. By the late 1980s, compact fax machines had revolutionized everyday
communications around the world.
• In 1876 Elisha Gray filed an unsuccessful claim for the invention of the
telephone, just hours after American inventor Alexander Graham Bell filed his
successful patent for its invention.