A Scottish inventor patented an image-transmission machine in 1843. More than a century later, it would become the office fax machine

The fax machine is often associated with the late 20th century, when offices routinely used it to send contracts, forms, letters and other documents over telephone lines. But the basic idea behind faxing is considerably older.

Its story begins with Alexander Bain, a Scottish inventor who patented an early method of transmitting images over electrical wires in 1843.

That was less than a decade after the telegraph had begun demonstrating that information could be sent over long distances using electrical signals.


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Bain's invention was primitive by modern standards, but the principle was remarkably important. His system used electrical signals to scan an image and reproduce marks on paper at another location. In other words, it explored one of the fundamental ideas behind fax technology: turning an image into signals that could travel through wires and then be reconstructed elsewhere.

The technology did not suddenly become a practical office tool.

Instead, it developed through a series of experiments and improvements over the decades.

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In 1851, English inventor Frederick Bakewell demonstrated another facsimile system at the Great Exhibition in London. His work showed that the transmission of images over telegraph lines was becoming more than an isolated experiment.

Then came an even bigger step.

In 1863, Italian inventor Giovanni Caselli launched a commercial facsimile service between Paris and Lyon. His system, known as the pantelegraph, could transmit handwriting and drawings over telegraph wires.

The idea was remarkably ahead of its time: a document could be reproduced at a distant location without the original having to travel there.

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But the technology still had a long way to go before it became something an ordinary office worker could use.

By the early 20th century, the demand for faster communication was growing rapidly. Businesses and newspapers were dealing with increasing volumes of information, while telecommunications networks were becoming more sophisticated.

Photographs were particularly valuable.

In 1924, AT&T introduced telephotography, a system that could transmit photographs over telephone lines. A photograph measuring roughly 5 by 7 inches could reportedly be transmitted in just a few minutes.

Around the same period, wireless facsimile technology was also emerging for newspapers and communications companies. Harvard University's Gazette notes that wireless photo facsimile had appeared by 1924, allowing photographs and printed material to be transmitted over long distances without relying on physical delivery.

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The technology was becoming increasingly useful, but it still wasn't the fax machine that millions of office workers would eventually recognize.

That transformation took decades.

Facsimile technology had already existed for generations by the 1920s, yet widespread office adoption came much later. The IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki notes that profitable fax services emerged after World War I, while machines designed for everyday office use became more common in the 1960s.

The familiar office fax machine finally became commonplace during the 1980s.

By then, the underlying problem had remained remarkably consistent for more than a century: how could people move information faster than they could move paper?

For businesses, the answer was enormously valuable.

A document did not have to be placed in an envelope, handed to a messenger or sent through the postal system. Instead, its contents could be transmitted through telephone lines and reproduced at another location.

That made the fax especially useful for contracts, invoices, forms, diagrams and other paperwork that businesses needed to exchange quickly.

And this is where the history of the fax machine becomes a story about office workers as much as inventors.

Secretaries, clerks and administrative employees were among the people who dealt most directly with the growing mountain of paperwork produced by modern businesses. Their everyday work created a constant demand for better ways to copy, store and transmit information.

The evolution of fax technology therefore wasn't simply the result of one inventor having a sudden breakthrough.

It was the product of generations of experimentation responding to a practical need.

Alexander Bain's 1843 patent did not produce the office fax machine immediately. There was no straight line from his invention to the machines that later sat beside telephones and photocopiers.

Instead, engineers and inventors gradually improved the underlying technology, telecommunications networks expanded, and businesses found increasingly useful applications for transmitting images electronically.

That makes Bain's invention particularly interesting in hindsight.

When he patented his image-transmission method in 1843, the modern office was still far in the future. Yet the basic challenge he was tackling — sending visual information across distance — would eventually become a routine part of business communication.

More than a century later, employees could place a sheet of paper into a machine and send a copy of it to another office almost instantly.

The fax machine eventually gave way to email, scanners, digital documents and online file-sharing services. But its long history shows that technologies can take an extraordinarily long time to reach their final, familiar form.

The machine that became an office staple in the 1980s was not really a sudden invention of the computer age.

Its roots stretched back to a Scottish inventor working with electrical signals in 1843.

What began as an experiment in transmitting images over wires would, through decades of inventions and improvements, become one of the defining communication tools of the modern office.