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The Fax is Not Yet Obsolete (theatlantic.com)
Fax, once at the forefront of communications technologies but now in deep decline, has persisted in many industries. From a report: Law-enforcement agencies remain heavily reliant on fax for routine operations, such as bail postings and return of public-records requests. Health care, too, runs largely on fax. Despite attempts to replace it, a mix of regulatory confusion, digital-security concerns, and stubbornness has kept fax machines droning around the world.
An early facsimile message was sent over telegraph lines in London in 1847, based on a design by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain. There is some dispute over whether it was the first fax: Competing inventors, including Bain in the United Kingdom and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell across the Atlantic, sought to father facsimile technology, which was a kind of white whale for inventors. Telegraphs already allowed messages to be passed across distances, one letter at a time using Morse code. But the dream of transmitting copies of messages and images instantly over wires was very much alive.
Writing in 1863, Jules Verne imagined that the Paris of the 1960s would be replete with fax machines, or as he called them, "picture-telegraphs." The technology did eventually lead to a revolution in communication, though it didn't happen until years later. It first became known to many Americans after the 1939 New York World's Fair, where a fax machine transmitted newspaper images from around the world at a rate of 18 minutes per page -- lightning speed for the time. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
An early facsimile message was sent over telegraph lines in London in 1847, based on a design by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain. There is some dispute over whether it was the first fax: Competing inventors, including Bain in the United Kingdom and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell across the Atlantic, sought to father facsimile technology, which was a kind of white whale for inventors. Telegraphs already allowed messages to be passed across distances, one letter at a time using Morse code. But the dream of transmitting copies of messages and images instantly over wires was very much alive.
Writing in 1863, Jules Verne imagined that the Paris of the 1960s would be replete with fax machines, or as he called them, "picture-telegraphs." The technology did eventually lead to a revolution in communication, though it didn't happen until years later. It first became known to many Americans after the 1939 New York World's Fair, where a fax machine transmitted newspaper images from around the world at a rate of 18 minutes per page -- lightning speed for the time. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
In the last five years I've moved from Australia to the USA and then to the UK, and now back to Australia. In all countries I have set up businesses, filed taxes for myself and the businesses, corresponded with the various government departments required to do all that stuff. I have had health care and gone to the doctors.
I had to send three faxes in this five year period - all to companies/organisations in the USA. Each time I had to do it (many months apart) I marvelled at what a weird anachronism it seemed to be, and asked various friends & family in other parts of the world if faxing was something they had to do very often (usually after me asking them if they had a way for me to send a fax, which they didn't), and they seemed equally surprised.
I can't remember the last time I sent a fax in Australia; easily more than 10 years ago.
You cannot beat the simplicity of a fax machine. You put in a piece of paper, enter someone's phone number, and it just WORKS.
Not in my experience it didn't. Fax spammers were a major PITA when we used to have a fax machine at work.
It got stupid in the end, missing out on important faxes because they'd used up all the paper over the weekend.
Just as bad, the morons who couldn't use a fax machine, put their document in the wrong way around and sent us a bunch of blank pages.
Or the idiots who don't check what number they're faxing, so you answer the office phone to bunch of squeals...often half a dozen times until they either give up or finally get the right number.