Although the fax machine did not begin to see wide acceptance until the late 1970s, the device’s invention predated its popularity by almost 130 years. The original versions in the 19th century were telegraph-based, because they predated the telephone by a number of years. But this isn’t so absurd as it may sound, as the modern fax machine’s digital ones and zeros are somewhat analogous to the telegraph’s binary state (circuit open/closed).
The first fax machine was invented by a brilliant Scottish clockmaker named Alexander Bain who sent the world’s first picture-by-wire using analog telegraph technology in 1842. The Bain system used a chemically-treated roll of paper whose color would change to blue wherever electricity was passed through it. Timed by a pendulum, a stylus would move over an advancing roll of this paper, passing the telegraph’s electric signal through the paper as it went, thereby drawing out the dots and dashes of the signal. After gaining some wider attention, this invention incurred the wrath of Samuel Morse, who made the borderline claim that it infringed on his famous patent. Morse managed to block the progress of Bain’s invention with a legal injunction.
In 1847, an Englishman named Frederick Bakewell improved on Bain’s concept, but used a rotating cylinder in place of the pendulum, and didn’t use Morse code. The transmitting cylinder was covered with a thin sheet of tin foil, upon which the desired image had been drawn in a special non-conductive ink. A needle would then read the cylinder in a tight spiral as the cylinder spun, sending an electric current down the line wherever the ink didn’t interrupt the signal. On the receiving end, the chemically treated paper was wrapped around a similar cylinder spinning at the same speed, the electric current staining the paper at each interruption of the signal. Although having problems with timing, this method was able to transmit simple images over telegraph, such as handwriting and line drawings, rather than just printed morse code.
Some 14 years later in 1861, an Italian inventor named Giovanni Caselli further improved upon previous designs with his Pantelegraph, or “Universal Telegraph” machine. This machine was similar to the Bakewell design, but it also included a “synchronizing apparatus” to resolve problems with timing that had led to distorted images on the Bakewell design. This machine won the attention and praise of Emperor Napoleon III himself, who witnessed a demonstration of an early prototype of the device in 1860.
Several other designs appeared in subsequent years, including Elisha Gray’s Telautograph in 1888, which instantly reproduced any stylus movement at the receiving station onto a stationary sheet of paper. The Telautograph was used by banks and hospitals to allow patrons to sign forms from remote locations. But the first telephone-based fax machine would not appear until AT&T completed one in 1924, eighty-two years after Bain’s first facsimile machine.
The First Faxes – Sending an Image Over a Wire
Alexander Bain is credited with inventing the first technology to send an image over a wire.
Working on an experimental fax machine between 1843 and 1846, he was able to synchronize the movement of two pendulums through a clock, and with that motion scan a message on a line by line basis.
The image projected to and from a cylinder. While it was able to transfer an image, it was of quite poor quality.
Bain’s patent, dated May 27, 1843, was for “improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces, and in electric printing, and signal telegraphs.”
First Commercial Use of Facsimile Technology
Credited with the first widely used invention similar to a fax would be Giovanni Caselli and his Pantelegraph.
A combination of “pantograph” (a machine used to copy drawings and words) and “telegraph” (a system for transmitting messages over long distance wires), the Pantelegraph was the first invention that became more widely used for image transmission.
A major difference of Caselli’s Pantelegraph, when compared with Bain and Bakewell’s inventions, was that it used a regulating clock to keep the sending and receiving mechanisms working together. The biggest issue in image transmission was how to synchronize two machines in different locations.
Financed by Leopold II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Caselli was later introduced to Napoleon II, and later further developed with help from French Inventor Leon Foucault.
With a successful demonstration in front of Napolean in 1860, the Pantelegraph started operation between Paris and Lyon in 1865 and extended to Marseille in 1867. For comparison with telephone, it was not until 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell received his patent for the telephone
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