History of the Fax Machine
Fax technology was created as early as the 1840s, thirty years before the invention of the telephone.
It was developed by an English inventor named Alexander Bain in 1843. Bain, a British inventor, in 1843.
However, fax communication was a slow-moving technology in the telecommunications field, maturing only in the 1920s and growing rapidly after the 1960s.
In the last decade or so, it has become one of the most widely used communication tools.
The Pendulum Pendulum Revelation
The origins of fax technology are strange to say the least; it was not the result of an intentional quest for new means of communication, but rather derived from the study of electric clocks.
In 1842, the Scotsman Alexander Bain studied the production of an electrically controlled clock. In 1842, the Scotsman Alexander Bain was working on an electrically controlled pendulum structure designed to form a number of clocks interconnected and synchronized in a master-slave system like today's mother-and-child clocks.
In the course of his work, he became acutely aware of the phenomenon that the pendulums of each of the clocks in the clock system were in the same relative position at any given moment.
This phenomenon led the inventor to think that if the main pendulum could be utilized so that it passed through a figure or character consisting of points of electrical contact on its journey, then this figure or character would be reproduced at the same time at one or more points distant from the main pendulum.
According to this idea, he added a scanning needle on the pendulum, playing the role of brushes; in addition to a clock driven by a "message board", the board has to transmit the graphics or characters, they are composed of electrical contacts; in the receiving end of the "message board" on the laying of a piece of electrically sensitive paper, when the pointer scanned on the paper, if there is a current pulse in the pointer, the paper will appear on a black dot.
When the pendulum at the sending end swings, the pointer touches the contact on the message board, a pulse is sent.
The message board is driven by the clock, slowly moving upward, so that the pointer scans the message board line by line, turning the graphics on the message board into electrical impulses transmitted to the receiving end; the receiving end of the message board is also driven by the clock slowly moving, so that the graphics are left on the electrosensitive paper to form a graphic with the same graphics as the sending end.
This is a primitive electrochemical recording method of fax machine.
The Roller Fax Machine
In 1850, another British inventor named F. Becker, took the fax machine and made it into a new machine. Becker, who greatly improved the structure of the facsimile machine by replacing the clock and pendulum structure with a "drum and screw" mechanism.
This improved structure, the working condition is somewhat like a lathe, the drum for rapid rotation, the fax sent by the roll of drawings on the drum with the rotation.
And the scanning needle is slowly moving along the axis of the drum along the silk rod, scanning the graphics on the surface of the drum spiral.
This type of drum fax machine was used for over a hundred years.
In 1865, an Iranian named Abakaje developed his own fax machine that could be practically applied, based on the principles and structure of the fax machine proposed by Behn and Bekkal, and took his fax machine to the French cities of Paris, Lyon, and Marseille to conduct experiments in fax communication.
The invention of the photo fax machine
The demand for the transmission of news photographs and photographic images was widespread.
Many scientists worked on the photo fax machine.
On November 8, 1907, a French inventor, édouard Bellin, was the first to develop a photo fax machine. On November 8, 1907, a French inventor, édouard Perrin, performed his development, the photofax, in front of a large audience.
Edouard Bellin (1876-1963) was a French inventor. Edouard Perrin (1876-1963) worked in the building of the Société Fran?aise de la Photographie, which was the beginning and end of the French telecommunication line from Paris - Lyon - Bordeaux - Paris.
This was a unique situation for Berland's research.
Périn's intensive research gained him the permission of the telecommunication department to use this communication line for his experiments at night.
Périn studied and experimented for three years in the basement of the building, and finally made a photo fax machine.
Eduard Berland was not satisfied with his work. Not satisfied with his initial success, he continued to work on the fax machine.
In 1913, he built the world's first handheld fax machine for news reporting.
In 1914, a French newspaper was the first to publish news photos transmitted by fax machine.
Photo-fax changed the pointer-contact scanning to photoelectric scanning, which not only improved the quality of the fax, but also made photo-faxing possible by combining photoelectric scanning and photographic plate making.
In 1925, the Bell Research Institute of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company developed a high-quality photo fax machine.
In 1926, a wired photo-fax service was officially opened across the continental United States, and in the same year, a wireless photo-fax service was opened across the Atlantic with the United Kingdom.
Since then, Europe and the United States and Japan and other countries have opened up the photo fax business, and since then the photo fax is widely used in news agencies to transmit news photos, and then extended to the military, public security and medical departments, used to transmit military photos, maps, photos of criminals, fingerprints, X-rays, etc.
The photo fax machine is also widely used in the United States, Europe and the United States.
Color fax machine
The earliest recorded image of a color fax appeared in the April 1925 volume of the Bell System Technical Report as an illustration.
The image was actually transmitted three separate times in three colors, red, green, and blue sequentially, using a color filter, and then overlapped and composited.
Later, the same basic technique was used to develop a facsimile device capable of reproducing color pictures, with some automation.
In August 1945, at the Potsdam Conference, color photographs of Truman, Stalin, and Adderley were successfully radioed from Europe to Washington.
But it still could not be used to open up the color fax business.
It was not until the mid-1980s that color fax machines evolved to the point where they could be practical.
Fax communication business development
In 1968, the United States took the lead in the public telephone network to open the fax business, the world also followed the use of the telephone network to open the fax communication business.
The number of fax machines that were originally limited to applications on specialized circuits soared, and the scope of applications expanded rapidly.
In particular, document facsimile machines, which are used to transmit handwritten, printed, or printed letters, documents, forms, graphics, and so on, are the most common and the fastest growing.
The former Advisory Committee on International Telephony (CCITT) telephone network used by the document facsimile machine was classified, they are:
A class of machines (G1) in the voice of a page on the road to transmit an A4 format (210mm × 296mm) documents in about 6 minutes;
The second class of machines (G2) in the voice of the road to transmit a page on the road to transmit an A4 format documents in about 3 minutes;
The second class of machines (G2) on the road to transmit a page of A4 format documents in about 3 minutes;<
Class III (G3) machine on the road to transmit a page of A4 format documents, about 1 minute;
Class IV (G4) high-speed document fax machine, the transmission of a page of A4 format documents, only 3 seconds.
Before the 1970s, the main use of a class of machines, the 1970s used to use the second class of machines, the 80s began to promote the use of three types of machines, its performance, functionality and continuous improvement, has gradually become the main type of fax communication.
The use of Category 4 machines is not yet common.
In the last decade or so, the development of fax communication has been more rapid, and now has become one of the fastest-growing non-voice telecommunications services.