A Dimwit’s Guide to Fax Machines

Why should you use it?

“Fax (short for facsimile, from Latin fac simile, "make similar", i.e. "make a copy") is a telecommunications technology used to transfer copies (facsimiles) of documents, especially using affordable devices operating over the telephone network.” ²

In a nutshell, fax machines are used to send paper files to other fax machines. The output is a copy of the paper file in hard copy format.

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Curious about how it works?

Fax Machines are used to transfer files from one fax machine to another. Files in paper form are read by fax machines as it transmits the data to the receiver. This process is made possible by a telephone line. But technically, how do fax machines really work?

The following explanation on how fax machines work is lifted from the site HowStuffWorks.com:

“Most of the early designs involved a rotating drum. To send a fax, you would attach the piece of paper to the drum, with the print facing outward. The rest of the machine worked something like this:

• There [is] a small photo sensor with a lens and a light.
• The photo sensor [is] attached to an arm and faced the sheet of paper.
• The arm could move downward over the sheet of paper from one end to the other as the sheet rotated on the drum.”¹

Rotating drums somewhat work this way:

After which, a photo sensor is then used by the fax machine to read the sheets of paper. “To transmit the information through a phone line, early fax machines used a very simple technique: If the spot of paper that the photo cell was looking at were white, the fax machine would send one tone; if it were black, it would send a different tone. At the receiving end, there would be a similar rotating-drum mechanism, and some sort of pen to mark on the paper. When the receiving fax machine heard a 1,300-Hertz tone it would apply the pen to the paper, and when it heard an 800-Hertz tone it would take the pen off the paper.” ¹

It works something like this:

“The scanning process: The scanner in a fax machine looks at one line of the sheet of paper. The scan line is shown here in red. It sees a group of black and white spots, shown blown up in the red rectangle at the bottom of the figure. It encodes the pattern of spots and sends them through the phone line.” ¹

This process is used by the traditional fax machines, nowadays modern fax machines operate a little differently. But essentially, it is quite the same.

“A modern fax machine does not have the rotating drums and is a lot faster, but it uses the same basic mechanics to get the job done:

• At the sending end, there is some sort of sensor to read the paper. Usually, a modern fax machine also has a paper-feed mechanism so that it is easy to send multi-page faxes.
• There is some standard way to encode the white and black spots that the fax machine sees on the paper so that they can travel through a phone line.
• At the receiving end, there is a mechanism that marks the paper with black dots.”

“The bits for the scanned document travel through the phone line and arrive at a receiving fax machine. The bits are decoded, uncompressed and reassembled into the scanned lines of the original document.

There are five common ways to print the fax, depending on the type of machine that receives it:

1. Thermal paper -- When fax machines started infiltrating offices en mass in the 1980s, most of them used thermal paper. The paper is coated with chemicals that react to heat by turning black. Thermal paper has several big advantages:
• It's very inexpensive to build a thermal printer.
• Thermal printers have no moving parts except for the paper-feed mechanism.
• There are no expendables like ink or ribbons because the paper contains the ink.
• Thermal printers are nearly indestructible.
• The only disadvantage is that the paper discolors over time, and it turns completely black if you leave it in a hot car.

2. Thermal film -- Thermal film uses a page-width ribbon that contains ink that melts onto paper when heated. This is more complicated mechanically than thermal paper but less complicated than an inkjet.

3. Inkjet -- This technique uses the same mechanism as an inkjet printer.

4. Laser printer -- This technique uses the same mechanism as a laser printer.

5. Computer printer -- The fax is actually received by a fax modem (a modem that understands the Group 3 data standards), stored on the computer's hard disk as a graphics file and then sent to the computer's usual printer.” ¹

Providers who dominates the business

There are numerous providers of fax machines. Some of the leaders in this industry are the following:

In no particular order:

1. Sharp
2. Xerox
3. Panasonic
4. Ricoh
5. Toshiba
6. Brother
7. Canon
8. Minolta
9. Samsung
10. HP
11. Lexmark
12. IBM

How is it any different?

We can differentiate fax machines with different products of today:

Scanners
Scanners are arguably a fax machine killer. Although, we can say that fax machines differ from the scanner by enabling its users to transfer a paper document to another with an output of a paper document.

Telephones
Fax machines do have telephones built in. Telephones do not have fax machines built in.

Printer
Some printers do have fax machine capabilities. Although printers use bond papers and ink to print out the documents, fax machines do have fax papers and requires no ink, with an exception of some specialized fax machines.

Cellular Phones
Cellular phones are used as a portable communication tool. Fax machines on the other hand are also a communication tool, but the bulk of this product is not portable. However, due to the advancement of technology, there are now fax machines which are wireless and portable available in the market.

Features that differ fax machines over another

Some of the features that differentiate one fax machine from another include the following: ³

1. Speed: fax machines transmit data at different rates, from 4,800 bps to 28,800 bps. A 9,600-bps fax machine typically requires 10 to 20 seconds to transmit one page.

2. Printer type: Most fax machines use a thermal printer that requires special paper that tends to turn yellow or brown after a period. More expensive fax machines have printers that can print on regular bond paper.

3. Paper size: The thermal paper used in most fax machines comes in two basic sizes: 8.5-inches wide and 10.1-inches wide. Some machines accept only the narrow-sized paper.

4. Paper cutter: Most fax machines include a paper cutter because the thermal paper that most fax machines use comes in rolls. The least expensive models and portable faxes, however, may not include a paper cutter.

5. Paper feed : Most fax machines have paper feeds so that you can send multiple-page documents without manually feeding each page into the machine.

6. Autodialing: fax machines come with a variety of dialing features. Some enable you to program the fax to send a document at a future time so that you can take advantage of the lowest telephone rates.

Don’t have anything more to do? Read ahead.

Fax Machine History = Usually not for the dimwitted.

Many inventors after Alexander Bain, worked hard on inventing and improving fax machine type devices. ⁴

• In 1850, a London inventor named F. C. Blakewell received a patent what he called a "copying telegraph".
• In 1860, a fax machine called the Pantelegraph sent the first fax between Paris and Lyon. The Pantelegraph was invented Giovanni Caselli.
• In 1895, Ernest Hummel a watchmaker from St. Paul, Minnesota invented his competing device called the Telediagraph.
• In 1902, Dr Arthur Korn invented an improved and practical fax, the photoelectric system.
• In 1914, Edouard Belin established the concept of the remote fax for photo and news reporting.
• In 1924, the telephotography machine (a type of fax machine) was used to send political convention photos long distance for newspaper publication. It was developed by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) worked to improve telephone fax technology.
• By 1926, RCA invented the Radiophoto that faxed by using radio broadcasting technology.
• In 1947, Alexander Muirhead invented a very successful fax machine.
• On March 4, 1955, the first radio fax transmission was sent across the continent.

Before you go…

Fun Fact

Unless it is photocopied, thermal fax paper can't be used for evidence in court. The ink can degrade over time while it is in storage. ⁵

SOURCES:
1. http://communication.howstuffworks.com/fax-machine.htm/printable
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax
3. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/fax_machine.html
4. http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/fax_machine.htm
5. http://www.ehow.com/facts_4760148_advantages-fax-machines.html