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Fax
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine (or a telecopier), which processes the contents (text or images) as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap, and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form of audio-frequency tones. The receiving fax machine interprets the tones and reconstructs the image, printing a paper copy. Early systems used direct conversions of image darkness to audio tone in a continuous or analog manner. Since the 1980s, most machines transmit an audio-encoded digital representation of the page, using data compression to transmit areas that are all-white or all-black, more quickly. Initially a niche product, fax machines became ubiquitous in offices in the 1980s ...
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Radiofax
Radiofacsimile, radiofax or HF fax is an analogue mode for transmitting grayscale images via high frequency (HF) radio waves. It was the predecessor to slow-scan television (SSTV). It was the primary method of sending photographs from remote sites (especially islands) from the 1930s to the early 1970s. It is still in limited use for transmitting weather charts and information to ships at sea. History Richard H. Ranger, an electrical engineer working at Radio Corporation of America (RCA), invented a method for sending photographs through radio transmissions. He called his system the wireless photoradiogram, in contrast to the fifty-year-old telefacsimile devices which used first telegraphic wires, and then later was adapted to use the newer telephone wires. On 29 November 1924, Ranger's system was used to send a photograph from New York City to London. It was an image of President Calvin Coolidge and was the first transoceanic radio transmission of a photograph. Also that yea ...
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Giovanni Caselli
Giovanni Caselli (8 June 1815 – 25 April 1891) was an Italian priest, inventor, and physicist. He studied electricity and magnetism as a child which led to his invention of the pantelegraph (also known as the universal telegraph or all-purpose telegraph), the forerunner of the fax machine. The world's first practical operating facsimile machine ("fax") system put into use was by Caselli. He had worldwide patents on his system. His technology idea was further developed into today's analog television. Caselli was a student and professor at the University of Florence in Italy. He started a technical journal that explained physics in Plain English, layman's terms. For his pantelegraph technology he was awarded the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III of France. Parisian scientists and engineers started the Pantelegraph Society to exchange ideas about the pantelegraph and the associated synchronizing apparatus, in order to get the sending and receiving mechanisms to work together properly ...
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Telautograph
The telautograph is an ancestor of the modern fax machine. It transmits electrical signals representing the position of a pen or tracer at the sending station to repeating mechanisms attached to a pen at the receiving station, thus reproducing at the receiving station a drawing, writing, or signature made by the sender. It was the first such device to transmit drawings to a stationary sheet of paper; previous inventions in Europe had used a constantly moving strip of paper to make such transmissions and the pen could not be lifted between words. Surprisingly, at least from a modern perspective, some early telautographs used digital/pulse-based transmission while later more successful devices reverted to analog signaling. Invention The telautograph's invention is attributed to the American engineer Elisha Gray, who patented it on July 31, 1888. Gray's patent stated that the telautograph would allow "one to transmit his own handwriting to a distant point over a two-wire circui ...
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Alexander Bain (inventor)
Alexander Bain (12 October 1810 – 2 January 1877) was a Scottish inventor and engineer who was first to invent and patent the electric clock. He created the first fax machine, known as Bain's facsimile. Bain also installed the railway telegraph lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Early life Bain was born in Leanmore, near Watten, Caithness, Scotland. He was baptised in the local kirk on 22 November 1810. His father was a crofter. He had a twin sister, Margaret, and, in total, he had six sisters and six brothers. Bain did not excel in school and was apprenticed to a clockmaker in Wick. Career Having learned the art of clockmaking, he went to Edinburgh, and in 1837 to London, where he obtained work as a journeyman in Clerkenwell. Bain frequented the lectures at the Polytechnic Institution and the Adelaide Gallery and later constructed his own workshop in Hanover Street. Electric clocks and Railway Telegraphs In 1840, desperate for money to develop his inventions, Bain ...
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Wirephoto
Wirephoto, telephotography or radiophoto is the sending of photographs by telegraph, telephone or radio. History Technologically and commercially, the wirephoto was the successor to Ernest A. Hummel's ''Telediagraph'' of 1895, which had transmitted electrically scanned shellac-on-foil originals over a dedicated circuit connecting the ''New York Herald'' and the ''Chicago Times Herald'', the ''St. Louis Republic'', the ''Boston Herald'', and the ''Philadelphia Inquirer''. Édouard Belin's Bélinographe of 1913, which scanned using a photocell and transmitted over ordinary phone lines, formed the basis for the Wirephoto service. In Europe, services similar to a wirephoto were called a Belino. The Bartlane system, invented by Harry G. Bartholomew and Maynard D. McFarlane, was a technique invented in 1920 to transmit digitized newspaper images over submarine cable lines between London and New York. and was first used to transmit a picture Transatlantic telegraph cable, across th ...
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Pantelegraph
The pantelegraph (Italian: ''pantelegrafo''; French: ''pantélégraphe'') was an early form of facsimile machine transmitting over normal telegraph lines developed by Giovanni Caselli, used commercially in the 1860s, that was the first such device to enter practical service. It could transmit handwriting, signatures, or drawings within an area of up to . Description The pantelegraph used a regulating clock with a pendulum which made and broke the current for magnetizing its regulators, and ensured that the transmitter's scanning stylus and the receiver's writing stylus remained in step. To provide a time base, a large pendulum was used weighing , mounted on a frame high. Two messages were written with insulating ink on two fixed metal plates; one plate was scanned as the pendulum moved to the right and the other as the pendulum moved to the left, so that two messages could be transmitted per cycle. The receiving apparatus reproduced the transmitted image by means of paper impr ...
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Data Compression
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information. Typically, a device that performs data compression is referred to as an encoder, and one that performs the reversal of the process (decompression) as a decoder. The process of reducing the size of a data file is often referred to as data compression. In the context of data transmission, it is called source coding: encoding is done at the source of the data before it is stored or transmitted. Source coding should not be confused with channel coding, for error detection and correction or line coding, the means for mapping data onto a sig ...
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Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn (20 May 1870 – 21 December/22 December 1945) was a German physicist, mathematician and inventor. He was involved in the development of the fax machine, specifically the transmission of photographs or telephotography, known as the Bildtelegraph, related to early attempts at developing a practical mechanical television system. Life Born in Breslau, Korn was the son of a Jewish couple, Moritz and Malwine Schottlaender. He attended gymnasia in Breslau and Berlin. He then studied physics and mathematics in Leipzig at the age of 15, from where he graduated in 1890. Afterwards, he studied in Berlin, Paris, London and Würzburg. In 1895, he became a lecturer in law at the University of Munich, and was appointed professor in 1903. In 1914, he accepted the chair of physics at Technische Universität Berlin. Dr. Korn, being of Jewish descent, was dismissed from his post in 1935 with the rise of the Nazi Party. In 1939 he left Germany with his family and moved to the ...
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Spark Printer
Spark printing is an obsolete form of computer printing and before that fax and chart recorder printing which uses a special paper coated with a conductive layer over a contrasting backing, originally black carbon over white paper but later aluminium over black paper. Printing on this paper uses pulses of electric current to burn away spots of the conductive layer. Typically, one or more electrodes are swept across the page perpendicular to the direction of paper motion to form a raster of potential burnt spots. Western Union developed the paper for this printing technology in the late 1940s, under the trademark " Teledeltos". The Western Union "Deskfax" fax machine, announced in 1948, was one of the first printers to use this technology. Spark printing was a simple and inexpensive technology. The print quality was relatively poor, but at a time when conventional printers cost hundreds of pounds, spark printers' sub-£100 price was a major selling point. The other major ...
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Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) was an American electrical engineering, electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric, Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his Invention of the telephone, development of a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois. Some recent authors have argued that Gray should be considered the true inventor of the telephone because Alexander Graham Bell allegedly stole the idea of the liquid transmitter from him. Although Gray had been using Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy#Use of liquid transmitters for telephone experiments.2C 1873-1876, liquid transmitters in his telephone experiments for more than two years previously, Bell's Invention of the telephone, telephone patent was upheld in numerous court decisions. Gray is also considered to be the father of the modern Synthesizer, music synthesizer, and was granted over 70 patents for his inventions. He was one of the founder ...
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Shelford Bidwell
Shelford Bidwell FRS (6 March 1848 – 18 December 1909) was an English physicist and inventor. He is best known for his work with "telephotography", a precursor to the modern fax machine. Private life He was born in Thetford, Norfolk the eldest son of Shelford Clarke Bidwell, a brewer, and his wife Georgina, the daughter of George Bidwell of Stanton, Norfolk. He entered Caius College, Cambridge, graduating BA (1870), MA (1873) and LLB (1873). Called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn in 1873, he practised as a barrister on the South Eastern Circuit for several years before becoming interested in electronics. He married in 1874 Anna Wilhelmina Evelyn, daughter of Edward Firmstone, rector of Wyke (Regis), the mother church of Weymouth who lived much of later life with his family in Winchester to be close to Winchester Cathedral. Bidwell was the head of a wealthy Victorian family from 1881 to at least 1901, having five servants, at Riverstone, Wimbledon Park Road, Southfields, ...
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Western Union
The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Denver, Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company changed its name to the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856 after merging with several other telegraph companies. It dominated the American telegraphy industry from the 1860s to the 1980s, pioneering technology such as telex and developing a range of telegraph-related services, including wire transfer, wire money transfer, in addition to its core business of transmitting and delivering telegram messages. After experiencing financial difficulties, it began to move its business away from communications in the 1980s and increasingly focused on its money-transfer services. It ceased its communications operations completely in 2006, at which time ''The New York Times'' described it as "the world's largest money-transfer business" and ...
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