A Brief History of the Fax Machine (And Why We're Relieved We Can Now Fax Online!)

Did you know that the first mechanical fax machine predates the invention of the telephone? Read on to discover how mankind moved from the mechanical fax to analog fax machines, and what key inventions paved the way for us to be able to fax online.

 

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1843: The Invention of the Mechanical Fax Machine

The invention of the first fax machine is generally credited to Scottish inventor Alexander Bain, who worked on mechanical fax type devices in the mid-1800s, including his "Electric Printing Telegraph". While Bain's inventions never saw commercial success, their invention led to further developments in fax technology by English physicist Frederick Bakewell. Bakewell improved on Bain's original design, creating the first telefax machine.

 

It wasn't until 1865, however, that the fax machine began to see broader usage, when Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon with his invention, the pantelegraph.

 

1924: The First Color Fax is Sent

Head of facsimile and television systems at AT&T, Herbert E. Ives transmitted and reconstructed the first-ever color facsimile. What did he choose to transmit for this historic occasion? A color photograph of Rudolph Valentino, a silent film actor known to Hollywood as "The Latin Lover".

 

Fun fax fact: in 1924, it took 6 minutes to send a single-page fax. By 1974, the time to send a single-page fax had cut in half to just 3 minutes.

 

1964: Telephone Transmission and the Xerox Machine

A long 40 years after Ives's first color fax, Xerox invented the Long Distance Xerograph (LDX), the first commercialized modern fax machine. It was the first to transmit documents globally, one page at a time, setting the standard for fax machine technology for years to come. Within a decade, many more companies had entered the fax market and a new wave of more compact, more efficient fax machines came onto the scene.

 

Xerox, not to be outdone, continued to compete in the fax machine market. Years after their ground-breaking first machine was released, Xerox combined the LDX with copier equipment, creating hybrid machines for copying, scanning, and faxing that are now commonly found in corporate offices.

 

1985-1996: The Birth of Internet Faxing

In 1985, Hank Magnuski, engineer and CEO of GammaLink, produced GammaFax, the first personal computer fax board and the first step in a new evolution in faxing. In 1996, the first online fax service was established, allowing the general public to send and receive facsimiles using a computer. The introduction of internet faxing revolutionized the accessibility and ease of faxing and paved the way for online faxing services today.

 

2010-Present Day: Smart Internet Faxing

With handheld devices at the forefront of technology, online fax services needed to move from the desktop to the pocket. Companies such as aFax™ now offer the easiest online fax service with email and mobile fax capabilities for handheld electronic devices, whether Apple or Android. Using the aFax™ app, all you need is to sign up for a free account on your preferred device to start sending faxes in seconds.

 

While we owe it to the inventors of the past for creating groundbreaking fax machine technology, we'll gladly leave the analog fax machine to history. Online faxing is efficient and easy - all you need is your cell phone and the aFax™ app.

 

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