Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogelbam Here. In eight seventy eight, Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent for a history altering device called the electronic telephone. But what you may not know is that the patent for another amazing communication tool, the facts similar machine or fax machine, was filed by a
Scottish clockmaker named Alexander Bain three decades earlier. That's right, fax machines predate even rudimentary telephones, and with a cockroach like survivability that makes very little sense from an evolutionary standpoint. The fax machine lives on beeping and wheezing up sheets of paper the world over. For example, faxing is big in Japan. Even today, about half of Japanese families use fax machine in their homes. The question is why. To understand it helps to know a bit about the fact
similar machines place in history. Although the technology had been around for decades, it wasn't until the nineteen thirty nine New York World's Fair that fax machines first seized mainstream recognition in the United States. There, attendees stood slack jawed in amazement as they viewed images and text arriving from
around the world. At eighteen sheets per minute, the machines were simply too expensive for everyday use, though even by two one standalone fax machines sold for a whopping twenty thousand dollars, far too pricey even for most businesses, much less individual consumers. It wasn't until later in the nineteen eighties that the cost of the machines dropped to a point that businesses and home offices found them useful, notably
for documents that required legal signatures. Copied signatures, as you can probably guess, were a source of controversy for years, as legal professionals argued about the validity of documents that arrived via phone lines. However, as court after court confirmed the validity of faxed signatures, doctors, lawyers, financial gurus, and other professionals begin to rely on faxes to transmit paperwork all over the place, thus entrenched in the workflow and
minds of countless millions of people. The late nineteen eighties saw a dramatic rise in the number of fax machines. America had only around three hundred thousand of the contraptions in the middle of the eighties. By nine there were more than four million the fax machines. Heyday was at hand. They even featured prominently in pop culture. The nine sci fi comedy Back to the Future Part two explores a future where the McFly family had a fax machine in
every room. So the faxing process is one that billions of people have ingrained into their consciousness. A place assigned document in the machine, punch in the destination phone number, hit the green button, and minutes later your paperwork is in the hands of a colleague on the other side of town or on the other side of the world. Assuming that the fax machine has paper, the cartridge is not out of ink, and nothing has gotten stuck in
the transmission process. But in the mid nineteen nineties, another history anging technology exploded in use the Internet, which provided people with ways to instantly send text, pictures, and documents without the use of paper. With the coming of widespread email, it seemed that fax machines were doomed. Only they weren't.
In a study from market intelligence firm I d C showed that the four major industries that are still using faxes UH those industries being manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and government, all predicted increased use of faxing over the next two years, averaging a increase. So why is that faxing is a
familiar technology that people trust. The Complexities of the Internet and its many offshoot technologies, along with endless headlines about hackerspyware viruses, and data breaches, create in many people's minds a sense that the Web just isn't secure. In addition, government policies still encourage faxes, and legal processes like discovery of evidence lean heavily on paper documents, and doctors facs
prescriptions and privacy documents and patient records. Fax machines are a habit, and it's a habit that dies hard because it's a simple, low tech, interoperable system that anyone can use with just a few minutes of training. Also, fax machines, like the aforementioned roaches, are evolving with the times. The people surveyed by I d C said that the biggest reason for the increase in faxing was that faxing was now integrated with email as digital faxing, and so was
easier to use. We spoke via email. Todd Johnson, a doctor at Access Family Medicine in Lincoln, Nebraska. He said, I fax office notes, prescriptions, lab data orders and consultation requests, all facts, anything else that's requested. I would email just as easily, but I don't have a general email account to send the requested information to. Typically, usually I'm only provided with a fax number to return the requested information. Johnson says that the newest generation of digital faxing makes
his workflow fairly easy. A quote. I don't use a feed and fax paper machine. I can facts from any of my computers, tablet, or smartphone. I use them because I'm requested to use them by other facilities. They're easy to use, and now electronically configured into my phone system. I just drag and drop a PDF into the fax portal and away it goes. If that sounds too good to be true, Never fear there's still one old school faxing bugaboo at hand busy signals, Johnson said, Sometimes, but rarely,
there is a busy signal. However, my system will re send a failed facts or if it encounters a busy signal. In spite of the intermittent hiccups and faxing, the machines are likely to live on for decades. They're comfortable, cheap, convenient, and generally reliable. They're accepted around the world in ways
that digital signatures sometimes aren't. So until digital alternatives find the same kind of universal recognition, you can expect that fax machines will still be here, beeping and worrying long after our individual messaging processes have ceased. Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more in this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.