We all know what faxing has done in revolutionizing office work and processing of data. Thanks to a Scottish inventor named Alexander Bain, he discovered and credited the first fax patent in 1843 by using his knowledge of electric clock pendulums in order to produce a back and forth line by line scanning mechanism. By 1861, the first fax machine named Pantelegraph, was sold by Giovanni Caselli, even before the invention of the telephones. As a designer, Richard Ranger invented the wireless photoradiogram or transoceanic radio facsimile, the father of today's fax machines. Commercial use of Ranger's product began two years later. One of the first fax machines, Exxon Qwip, was present around the mid-70's. This worked by the use of optical scanning of a document. The reflected light, varying in intensity according to the dark and light areas of the document, was being focused onto a photocell that is to be converted to an electrical signal that varies in frequency. The audio tone is then communicated using a telephone handset in a coupler that serves as the modem. At the receiving end, the same technique was used.



A facsimile machine, or fax, is a communications product used to deliver copies of documents using devices operating over the telephone network. It comprises of an image scanner, a modem, and a printer all combined in one single package. The scanner is for converting the content that is printed on a paper document into a digital image, then the modem sends the image data through a phone line in to another device, and the printer at the receiving end will produce a copy of the communicated document. Other fax machines are connected through a computer, and its components (scanner, printer, and modem) can all be used separately. Even if the instrument for transferring printed documents have existed in various forms since the late 19th century, fax machines have become usable only in the mid 70s as the sophistication increased and the cost of the three underlying technologies dropped. Digital fax machines soon became popular in Japan, where they had an advantage over the teleprinter, since it was faster to write kanji than to type its characters. During the course of time, faxing has become more popular and affordable, and by the 80s, fax machines were all seen all over the world.

Although many businesses still manage to have some faxing capabilities, this kind of technology has already been modified and made to serve the present generation, which is through the use of Internet. Today, faxing has entered the digital era and is seen through different websites that offer Internet faxing. Services from these websites include fax to email messaging and online faxing. It offers efficiency and security that will assure its users that their messages will be received properly and just as fast. We may not be able to use paper as a tool for communication, but being digital is faster and more up to date with everyone else. The messages that are sent can be accessed anywhere using desktop, laptop, PDA phones or even mobile phones that have Internet connections. Talk about convenience.