The typical office has computers, telephones, stationary, desks and chairs, printers and a fax machine. Each item serves its own key role in allowing work to move along smoothly throughout the working day. Though you may give little thought to how each made its journey to being part of a typical office they all have interesting stories. The most popular, the computer is known by most, even if only in part. The telephone has probably been around the longest and you more than likely know the name of the man credited with its invention, Alexander Graham Bell. What do you know about the fax broadcasting machine, however?
Quite likely, you have nothing of note to answer that question. It is nothing to be ashamed of but, don’t you find it unusual that one of the key components in your office is not very well known. Would you have a stranger eating, sleeping and living in your home with little or no knowledge of where they come from? It is very much the same with your fax broadcasting machine. It is in your office every day, using electricity, sending and receiving important documents, and aside from a basic knowledge of how to use it, you don't know much more about it.
The word fax is short for facsimile and the machine is sometimes called tele copying or a telefax machine. Precursors to the fax machine were developed as early as 1873 by Alexander Bain. His machine was called the “Electric Printing Telegraph”. Bain’s machine was further improved by a Fredrick Bakewell. Then an Italian scientist named Giovanni Caselli created a much more improved machine and presented to the world the first commercial faxing service in France. What is interesting about that service is that it was in the year 1865, which is truly astounding, as this is over a decade before a telephone was brought to the world.
Another noted year in the fax machine’s development is the year 1888. It is this year that the fax machine is bestowed with the capability to send signatures over vast distances, which is one of the main reasons you and many others likely treasure the fax machine. It is not until the latter part of the 20th century that a version of the first modern fax broadcasting machine is made by a company famous for its development of computers, Xerox. After its break through machine in the 1960s Xerox along with several other IT companies created and developed the machine we know now. Those machines created in the 1970s and early 1980s had the copy, scan, and fax features, as well as Ethernet connection to computers. Thanks to those capabilities especially the latter we can do things like fax broadcasting. Also since the machine became a hybrid one, it meant offices only needed to get one kind instead of a photocopy machine, a scanner and a fax machine.
As computers became more powerful the capabilities of the telefax machine increased to the machine you have in your office today. Sadly, with the increase of alternatives in sending data wirelessly or over the internet, fax transmissions have decreased and it is likely that sooner or later the multifunctional fax machine will slowly disappear from the office.
Now you can impress your co-workers
with a few facts about the machine while they are standing in front of
it for a few minutes. Hey, who knows? These seemingly useless facts
could end up giving you a reason to strike up a conversation with that
very good looking co-worker. Find More