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SITE, LLC, operating out of Beacon Falls, CT.

Since 1994,                        

we have provided       

thousands of       

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and geotechnical                 

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services throughout           

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         Probing on an angle

In loving Memory of John Anthony DeAngelis, Sr.  (August 30, 1931 - May 11, 2011)

INVENTION OF THE WEEK

Fax Machine  (1925)

     "The early devices generally referred to as fax machines were crude compared with what is available in businesses and homes today.  The concept of sending text and images electrically through telegraph wires goes back at least to 1862, to the Italian physicist, Giovanni Caselli.  The first truly successful model of the facsimile, or fax, machine was invented in 1925 by a Frenchman, Edouard Belin (1876-1963).  To operate Belin's machine, the Belinograph, a person placed a photograph on a cylinder where a bright beam of light scanned it.  The machine converted the shades of light and dark in the photo to electrical impulses that could be sent over telegraph wires to a receiver which printed out the image.  The Belinograph worked so well that, in 1934, The Associated Press installed the apparatus in its offices so reporters could 'wire' photos anywhere in the world. 

     The first practical fax machine that transmitted letter-size documents over telephone lines was manufactured by Xerox in 1966.  It weighed 'only' 46 pounds and it took six minutes to send a single page over the wires.  In the 1970s, Japanese electronics companies entered the market, producing smaller, faster fax machines.  Fax machines today are infinitely faster than the Belinograph and still faster than the models manufactured by Xerox and the Japanese firms.  Nonetheless, compared to instant messaging and high-speed Internet connections, the fax is probably the clunkiest piece of office equipment.

     The fundamentals of the fax machine have not changed since Belin's day.  Contemporary models still operate with a light that scans the document, translates the image into electrical impulses, and then sends them over the wires to the receiver.  (Craughwell 386)"

Works Cited

Craughwell, Thomas J.. The Book of Invention. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc., 2008.