{"id":27593,"date":"2013-10-28T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uncommongoods.com\/?p=27593"},"modified":"2013-11-01T18:32:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-01T22:32:00","slug":"uncommon-knowledge-fax-machine-invented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/2013\/uncommon-knowledge-fax-machine-invented\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Knowledge: When was the fax machine invented?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/product\/usb-typewriter?source=blog\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/21268_zoom1.jpg\" alt=\"USB Typewriter | UncommonGoods\" width=\"550\" height=\"550\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-28000\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/21268_zoom1.jpg 550w, https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/21268_zoom1-125x125.jpg 125w, https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/21268_zoom1-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/21268_zoom1-45x45.jpg 45w, https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/21268_zoom1-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a>Electrical transmission of documents and images didn\u2019t begin with the Internet, of course. But for those of us who remember the heyday of the fax machine, it may be more surprising to know that faxing also didn\u2019t begin with the telephone. Thirty years before Alexander Graham Bell got his patent, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain was developing images via telegraph lines in 1843. Trained as a clock-maker, Bain used synchronized pendulums at the sending and receiving end to scan the message, and the facsimile would be printed out using a special, electrically sensitive paper. Unfortunately, Bane\u2019s invention had some major flaws\u2014the pendulums were never perfectly synchronized, and the quality of the image was very poor\u2014and by the time he tried to patent it in 1850, other inventors had already patented superior versions of the device.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/product\/usb-typewriter?source=blog\" target=\"_blank\">USB Typewriter, $799<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Electrical transmission of documents and images didn\u2019t begin with the Internet, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":28001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1208],"tags":[813],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}