Comments on: Invented Earlier than You’d Think – Pt. 1 – Fax Machines

By: George

George — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:54:59 +0000

On the color unit, I wonder if people tried hacking the print mechanism to use 5 cent colored pencils from Woolworth’s instead of the surely overpriced official refills.

By: Al Bear

Al Bear — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:15:55 +0000

I love the nearly 60 year old COLOR fax machine! man, it took real engineering to come up with stuff like this without the aid of computers. Much respect to the inventors back then.

By: JMyint

JMyint — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:00:07 +0000

Sounds like you are talking about cyanotype printing. It is a photocoping process developed by Sir John Henschel that was used to copy charts and plans. It is where we get the term blueprint from.

http://www.ephotozine.com/arti.....e-printing

By: jayessell

jayessell — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:51:28 +0000

When did the Weather Service start and stop using the big dark blue on light blue weather charts?
I saw some in the late 1970s. Were they 14 to 18 inches wide by 24 to 36 inches?
I think some sort of electrochemical principle was used where an electric current discolored the paper.
(It had a sort of ‘mimeograph’ smell.) (Yes, I’m old.)

By: fluffy

fluffy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:14:40 +0000

The Seattle-based band Octothorpe wrote a song entitled "Fax Machine," extolling the virtues of a fax machine vs. more modern forms of communication. The chorus repeatedly references Alexander Bain. It doesn't appear to be on their website anymore but it's available at Song Fight!. (Disclaimer: I was a member of Octothorpe at the time, and I certainly played many parts in that song, including the more bizarre-sounding vocals and the guitar. And probably other stuff. We were drunk at the time.)

By: Eliyahu

Eliyahu — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:15:28 +0000

But these are all recent machines. Consider…

Scottish inventor Alexander Bain is often credited with the first fax patent in 1843. He used his knowledge of electric clock pendulums to produce a back-and-forth line-by-line scanning mechanism.

Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain’s design and demonstrated the device at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.

In 1861, the first fax machine, the Pantelegraph, was sold by Giovanni Caselli, even before the invention of workable telephones.

As a designer for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), in 1924, Richard H. Ranger invented the wireless photoradiogram, or transoceanic radio facsimile, the forerunner of todayâ€™s fax machines. A photograph of President Calvin Coolidge sent from New York to London on November 29, 1924 became the first photo picture reproduced by transoceanic radio facsimile. Commercial use of Rangerâ€™s product began two years later. Radio fax is still in common use today for transmitting weather charts and information. Also in 1924, Herbert E. Ives of AT&T transmitted and reconstructed the first color facsimile, using color separations.

By: Mike Brown

Mike Brown — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:46:41 +0000

Back in the 70’s Western Union was scrapping those Desk Fax machines, and I, among many other ham operators, picked up a few to tinker with. They were fairly easy to connect to VHF transmitters and receivers, so you could do a reasonable job faxing pictures back and forth on two meters (144-148 MHz) AM. The synchronization circuit required a DC pulse, so you couldn’t use that, but we figured out ways to count down and say “NOW” just before hitting the “Send” button, so that the ham on the other end could get his machine spinning in time for the first few lines.

The machines used a fine steel wire and current-sensitive paper to literally burn the image onto the receiving form. Setting levels was fairly easy – you adjusted the volume control on the receiver for a small but consistent flow of smoke. Images were received in negative, until some bright soul discovered a way to connect a fiber optic pipe to route a little light around the optical interrupter wheel, changing the reference level from black to white… ah, those were the days.