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Fax machines |
| Briton
Alexander Bain first had the idea of a facsimile machine
in 1843. Several other people improved on the idea but
the invention didn't become commercially viable until
Xerox developed a machine in 1966 that could transmit
signals over telephone lines. It would take another
decade or so before fax machines become common in offices
in the 1980s. Faxes provide a way of sending documents accurately and quickly. But it wasn't always so. Can you believe that fax machines used to take six minutes to transmit just one page? But the fax's speed is not always welcomed. Some people call it the stress machine. Where you could previously disregard an invoice or a memo and blame it on slow postal service, faxing enables the sender to know if the transmission was successful and is more difficult to ignore. Fax machines are so popular now some people have it at home as an extension of the telephone. Faxes are still restricted to black and white copies though colour faxes may one day be just as common. |
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