This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. Fax Machines

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Long before Computers had E-mail, people had to use Fax Machines to send stuff over the phone-lines. Fax Machines back then were the must have items for any working family or small business, and since my Mom & Dad were crop dusters, they thought that having one would make things easier. Boy, were they wrong.

Back then, there were three types of Fax Machines. One would print on a single page of paper at a time, another would print on computer paper (the kind with the holes on the sides), and one were the paper came on a big roll just like paper towels. My parents got the Fax Machine that used the rolled paper, and from day one, it was a big pain in the butt for them to use.

For one thing, it kept getting paper jams. But unlike the other two types of Fax Machines, they could not just take the one page out of it, they had to remove the whole roll and then reinstall it. Also, if it ever ran out of paper during a fax, it would just keep printing and waste a lot of black ink. As for the ink itself, the cartridge for it was about the same size as a paper towel roll, and it cost my parents about $100.00 just to get a new one every time the Fax Machine ran out of ink, watch was about once every two weeks.

But the worst thing to happen was when my Dad tried to send out a fax for an order and it went to the wrong fax number. Good thing it went to someone that I Dad already knew, other wise it could had been a lot worse.

Did your parents ever get a Fax Machine when you were a kid? Was it as a big of a pain in the butt as ours?

5 thoughts on “Artifacts of the Analog Age: Fax Machines

  1. Chris Sobieniak says:

    Although you talk about fax machines, it should be pointed out this is really a copier instead you use in the ad above. These have been around for decades. Unlike a normal xerox copier which uses toner and all that, these use a process of thermally printing through a heating process I think.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermofax

    Many schools I went to back in the 80’s and 90’s used these to produce their overhead transparency sheets (if you remember what an overhead projector was). The same technique and machine was adopted by many Japanese animation studios in transferring the pencil lines of their drawings to cels as well. (you can tell as the outlines would be on the reverse side than on front)

  2. Lauren B says:

    I’ll be honest, I could never wrap my brain around the point of fax machines. I sort of understood how they worked, but not why they were useful. I guess because I was a kid back in their heyday, I had no need for them at the time and it wasn’t something either of my parents ever needed to fool with for work. :/

  3. Chris Sobieniak says:

    Incidentally, there is this little half-hour program that tells of the Fax Machine’s history
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaCfs5Xb-EI

  4. fluffy says:

    Sadly, a lot of places STILL use fax machines, because for some reason they are accepted as a legally-binding document whereas scanned and emailed images aren’t. Even though these days most “faxing” happens via scanning and emailing with a roundabout convert-and-send-over-analog-phone-lines middle step.

    Real estate is especially bad about this.

    1. Chris Sobieniak says:

      People still want to leave a paper trail behind.

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