Fax has been around for over 70 years and has been a trusted medium of communication across many industries. It has evolved as technology developed, going from relying on paper to convey messages, to people not even needing to be connected to an actual fax machine to send or receive faxes. In fact, the fax was invented before the telephone was.
- Physicist and clockmaker, Alexander Bain was the inventor of the fax.
- The first photograph to be sent via fax was sent in 1904 by Arthur Korn who was an inventor.
- The first fax cable system ran between London and New York in 1924 and it was established by AT&T.
- It used to take 6 minutes to send just a single page fax in 1924 and 3 minutes in 1974.
- It takes only 1.7 seconds to send a single page of fax today.
- Most fax machines are manufactured in Japan, China and Korea.
- There are 18 million fax machines in the USA alone today, compared to the 30,000 in 1970.
- The first fax system was too complicated and expensive, thus it was not widely adopted especially because it was introduced after the telegram was already developed.
- In the United States, a good quality machine cost $20,000 in 1982. Today it sells for $1,000.
