I used to love fax machines. My old career in charity management relied on it. I faxed everyday.
I was always impressed with the simplicity of the idea, sending pictures through a telephone, which I suppose is a forerunner of the internet.
The whole world of faxing was fascinating. It had its own telephone number on letterheads so it must have been important. If you rang a fax number you would hear that crazy screeching noise like a bad day at NASA.
You could send handwritten notes and sketches by fax, which was always fun to do and receive. I only sent black and white stuff though. No idea if colour was possible.
I used to use my fax as a lazy copier too. It would easily photocopy a couple of sheets and never seemed to have the catastrophic melt-downs the xerox had.
Some companies had Telex when I first started work. Like Fax, the Telex number was printed on a letterhead. To this day I'm still unsure what Telex was or whether Fax grew out of it. I only actually found out years later when I saw the phrase Facsimile Machines on a bridge billboard that Fax was short for facsimile, which is obvious really!
I bet in its heyday the Fax even came in toy form for young 'uns. I had a toy Casdon cash till and plastic telephone set when I was a kid so why not.
I wonder just how far real fax machines came before email booted them out of the nest? Did they have video screens for instance where you could see who was faxing you? Could you talk to your faxer at the same time? Just how big could a fax be? A0? I used to wonder if eventually we would fax things like moving images like video footage or even physical objects, a nod towards Star Trek beaming-up and 3D printing perhaps?
Yep, I miss my fax. Do you?
Never used one but I remember we had one at work and my Head of Department had to try and remember to switch it off every evening or it would receive junk faxes all night that would use up all its ink and paper!
ReplyDeleteYou know I never ever saw a junk fax in all my years in an office Kev. How strange. Junk faxes all night would have been annoying! Spam, it gets everywhere!
DeleteThey had one in the Swansea Sound Newsroom, but the telephone cables from the studios were old and decrepit that most of the time what was sent or received was pretty incomprehensible… It was known as the F-U-X machine! As it was unserviceable most of the time.
ReplyDeleteYou would have thought a newsroom would have needed a working fax Bill eh. The FUX machine! ha ha. How did they find out about their scoop stories? By phone?
DeleteFrom about the late 1970s all Independent Local Radio Stations were fitted with a Rip and Read Teleprinter linked directly to IRN in London. By the time I arrived in 1988 the FAX was largely redundant in local radio circles.
DeleteRip and read - that's a great phrase Bill. Is that what we see in the movies, a thin band of paper constantly chugging out of a machine. Its funny how a home-based version was never invented. It would have been fun having news via ticker tape!
DeleteMy uncle's staff at a hospital faculty had a great response to junk faxes: they'd tape two/three A4s together, on which was written a large-lettered request to not fax junk to them anymore. Then after working hours, they'd fax that back to the offending fax number, and after the transmission had started, they'd tape the first and last sheet together. Then they'd leave that cycling through the fax for an hour or two, buy which time there'd be yards and yards of uninterrupted fax message at the receiving end, with probably no paper left. :)
ReplyDelete@Woodsy: a telex/teletype/teleprinter also used phone lines, but essentially used typewriters. Messages were typed on a machine at one end after which the signals would operate a typewriter at the receiving end. So just text and no images, except perhaps the kind made up from letters and symbols of the alphabet. A fax uses a digital scanner and printer, with digital signals (converted to sound) in between. Afaik only in B/W and no video screens to see who you're faxing. :)
Best -- Paul
Now that's Junk vengeance Paul! very clever re-faxing! I forget where the paper was in a fax. Was it stacked up or on a roll?
DeleteThanks for the Telex explanation. I love how it linked to a typewriter. Its fascinating when existing tech is morphed into something new like Telex and Fax. I dread to think where smartphones and home help units will take us!
Early faxes used thermal paper on a roll, Woodsy, stored somewhere in the back of the machine (cash tills and such still use that). With the advent of laserprinters and inkjets those technologies were also used in later faxes, which then became sheet-fed.
DeleteBest -- Paul
I remember that roll of paper. It had a funny feel to it Paul. Ta.
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