FAX Full Form

FAX is an abbreviation used for facsimile. It is also called telecopying or telefacsimile, further abbreviated as telefax. 

What Is Fax?

FAX is a scanned copy of writing text or an image printed on paper and shared through a telephonic line. The FAX machine is the device that performs the task of sending documents electronically over a telephone network. The FAX machine is a combination of a scanner and printer.

Working Of A Fax Machine

The FAX machine is a combination of a scanner and printer. The scanner performs the task of scanning the document text or image and transforms it into a fixed graphic image. After that, the fixed graphic image is a bitmap and transferred over a telephone network to the receiver’s fax machine. 

The fax machine receives the transmitted telephonic signal at the receiver’s end and reverses the bitmap of the signal. The printer prints the bitmap on the page in the FAX machine.

This is the complete working of the latest FAX machines. However, FAX machines are outdated now. FAX was the most official way of transportation of documents. But after the invention of electronic mails, they are used to fulfil official documentation. People use emails instead of FAX now.

History of FAX

FAX was invented by a Scottish inventor, Alexander Brain, who brought out a chemical-based device similar to the fax in a laboratory experiment and named it “Electric Printing Telegraph”. This was patented by the British on 27th May 1843. Frederick Bakewell presented a telefax machine by improving Bain’s model many times.

In 1865, 11 years before the invention of telephones, Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli invented Pac Telegraph and successfully established the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon. This was a wired transmission.

The FAX machines between the 1970s and 1990s used a different technology from present FAX machines. They used direct thermal printers with rolls of thermal paper to print. 

After the mid-1990s, FAX machines were drawn towards the plan paper faxes, which meant a thermal transfer, inkjet, and laser printers. 

When the inkjet printers were marked as a revolutionary success, some FAX machines claimed to print coloured faxes. However, many of these colour FAX machines can only fax between the FAX machines of the same brand. The standard, which is formally called the ITU-T Recommendation T.30 Annex E and abbreviated as ITU-T30e for faxing in colour, didn’t much support this idea.

Alternative for a Physical FAX

Over time physical FAX is not much of a bigger deal. Virtual FAX can fulfil the requirements effectively instead of the physical one. An alternative to a physical FAX machine is using your desktop computer. There is software that helps you send and receive faxes, a virtual FAX, widely called mail, can be printed out and then signed for making it official and further scanned back before further sharing it. However, the sender can also use a digital signature and attach it with the document file.

In this era where every facility is available in your hands within your smartphones, you can download a virtual FAX application on your Android or iOS handset. The phone’s camera is used to scan documents or images and converted to pdf or other document formats with the help of some applications. They are further attached, sent, uploaded, and imported from different cloud services.

Why is Email preferred over FAX?

You might not be able to find many FAX machines around you, at your workplace, office or educational institution, because they are outdated now. After the invention of electronic mail in 1965 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), people preferred using mail instead of a FAX machine. There are many reasons for such a takeover. The majority of them are listed below. 

• The quality of data sent over the internet is better than Fax. The quality is more original.
• Sharing data over the internet is much more cost-effective than sharing it over Fax.
• There is no need for additional hardware for sending data over the internet. Unlike Fax, you need to set up a fax machine for that purpose.
• There is no need to monitor the system while Sharing data. It is automatically saved in an email id, and the user can use it whenever he needs it.
• Transferring data over mail is much faster and easier than a FAX machine, saving your time and effort.
• Fax machines experience much more technical problems like paper jams which can damage the original document.
• You can share a single piece of data with multiple people in just one click by using the CC or BCC email fields.
• Any additional information can be shared by attaching images, videos, files etc. At the same time, FAX is limited to text and images only.

Conclusion

FAX is an abbreviation of facsimile. A FAX machine is a machine that consists of a printer and a scanner. The scanner scans a document or image and changes its information in the signal; these signals are then transmitted and printed on the receiver’s end with the help of a printer. We discuss the history and working of a FAX machine. We also discussed how the invention of emails wiped out fax machines.