History of FAX, totally OT

[Carroll Grigsby]

On Thursday 03 February 2005 09:48 am, Gordon Keehn wrote:
> >    *Fax machines have actually been around since at least the 1800's. A
> >mechanical device which carved wood was set up in two towns in France
> >for some kind of exposition, with just a wire between the two towns. It
> >actually worked, and the idea's been around since then, building slowly
> >through the 1970's when my Dad owned a service for faxing checks between
> >truckstops and transportation companies.  Not a new idea, for a long
> >time.
>
>     Those old enough to remember "Dragnet" in the '50s (Jack Webb, Ben
> Alexander, and they don't make 'em like that anymore!) saw occasional
> glimpses of a gadget with a sheet of paper wrapped around a rapidly
> revolving drum, with a solenoid-controlled pen to draw the image.  I
> don't recall what they called it but as a young teen, I thought it was
> next thing to magic.
>     Cheers,
> Gordon Keehn



Back in the late 40's, I read an electronics-for-teens book that described a 
fax system that had been in use in the US prior to World War II to transmit 
the local newspaper via AM radio to readers. The transmission was done during 
the overnight period when the station would normally have been off of the 
air. The receiver used a heated element mounted at the end of an arm that 
scanned across a coated paper, burning the transmitted image into the paper, 
and required an internal connection to the radio. The paper came in roll 
form, and was perhaps six or eight inches wide. The reader turned the radio 
on at night, and in the morning would have a fresh copy of the paper. No more 
going out on a rainy morning in robe and slippers to search through the 
shrubbery trying to find the paper!

The service was dropped at the start of the war and never revived.

-- cmg