Invention Of Fax Machine

In an age when faxes are transmitted using telephone lines, it is surprising to find out that the first fax machine was invented three decades earlier than the telephone - the first faxes were actually transmitted by telegraph.

On 27 November 1843 Alexander Bain (Scotland) filed a patent containing the first description of the facsimile (or fax) machine, and outlined the basic principle that is still used in modern fax machines - the transmission of an electric signal to indicate whether a given part of the document is black or white. Bain proposed using synchronized pendulums to "map" a document written in an electrically conductive material, but he never actually made a transmission. In 1848 physicist Frederic Bakewell (England) patented an improved version of Bain's machine, and made the first public demonstration of a fax transmission at Britain's Great Exhibition in 1851.

 Bakewell's machines worked, but it was not a commercial success, and it was another decade before the first truly practical fax machine was invented, by Giovanni Caselli (Italy), an abbot who was granted a patent for his "pantelagraph" in 1861. The pantelegraph incorporated ideas from both Bain's and Bakewell's patents, and worked on a similar principle - but it was efficient enough for the French government to set up the first commercial fax line, from Paris to Lyons, in 1865 (the line was later extended to Marseilles).

Despite Caselli's initial success, use of the fax machine did not become widespread because of vested interests in conventional telegraphy using Morse code. After the Franco-Purssian War put paid to his French system, Caselli's fax machine fell into relative obscurity until the 20th century, when Dr Alexander Korn (Germany) developed the concept of photoelectric scanning. The principle remained the same - the photoelectric scanner would "map" the black and white areas of the document - but ordinary documents could not be sent, regardless of their electrical conductivity or resistance, and fax machines no longer relied on pendulums. These advantages, plus the fact that the telegraph had given way to the telephone, led to the more widespread use of fax machines, first by newspapers and then by businesses in general.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison