fax
- In full:
- facsimile, also called telefax
fax, in telecommunications, the transmission and reproduction of documents by wire or radio wave. Common fax machines are designed to scan printed textual and graphic material and then transmit the information through the telephone network to similar machines, where facsimiles are reproduced close to the form of the original documents. Fax machines, because of their low cost and their reliability, speed, and simplicity of operation, revolutionized business and personal correspondence. They virtually replaced telegraphic services, and they also present an alternative to government-run postal services and private couriers.
Standard fax transmission
Most office and home fax machines conform to the Group 3 standard, which was adopted in 1980 in order to ensure the compatibility of digital machines operating through public telephone systems worldwide. As a standard letter-size sheet is fed through a machine, it is scanned repeatedly across its width by a charge-coupled device (CCD), a solid-state scanner that has 1,728 photosensors in a single row. Each photosensor in turn generates a low or high variation in voltage, depending on whether the scanned spot is black or white. Since there normally are 4 scan lines per mm (100 scan lines per inch), the scanning of a single sheet can generate almost two million variations in voltage. The high/low variations are converted to a stream of binary digits, or bits, and the bit stream is subjected to a source encoder, which reduces or “compresses” the number of bits required to represent long runs of white or black spots. The encoded bit stream can then be modulated onto an analog carrier wave by a voice-band modem and transmitted through the telephone network. With source encoding, the number of bits required to represent a typewritten sheet can be reduced from two million to less than 400,000. As a result, at standard fax modem speeds (up to 56,000 bits per second, though usually less) a single page can be transmitted in as little as 15 seconds.
Communication between a transmitting and a receiving fax machine opens with the dialing of the telephone number of the receiving machine. This begins a process known as the “handshake,” in which the two machines exchange signals that establish compatible features such as modem speed, source code, and printing resolution. The page information is then transmitted, followed by a signal that indicates no more pages are to be sent. The called machine signals receipt of the message, and the calling machine signals to disconnect the line.
At the receiving machine, the signal is demodulated, decoded, and stored for timed release to the printer. In older fax machines the document was reproduced on special thermally sensitive paper, using a print head that had a row of fine wires corresponding to the photosensors in the scanning strip. In modern machines it is reproduced on plain paper by a xerographic process, in which a minutely focused beam of light from a semiconductor laser or a light-emitting diode, modulated by the incoming data stream, is swept across a rotating, electrostatically charged drum. The drum picks up toner powder in charged spots corresponding to black spots on the original document and transfers the toner to the paper.
Group 3 facsimile transmission can be conducted through all telecommunications media, whether they be copper wire, optical fibre, microwave radio, or cellular radio. In addition, personal computers (PCs) with the proper hardware and software can send files directly to fax machines without printing and scanning. Conversely, documents from a remote fax machine may be received by a computer for storage in its memory and eventual reproduction on a desktop printer. Internet fax servers have been developed that can send or receive facsimile documents and transmit them by e-mail between PCs.
History of fax technology
The concepts of facsimile transmission were developed in the 19th century using contemporary telegraph technology. Widespread employment of the method, however, did not take place until the 1980s, when inexpensive means of adapting digitized information to telephone circuits became common. The long and ultimately fruitful history of fax technology is traced in this section.
Early telegraph facsimile
Facsimile transmission over wires traces its origins to Alexander Bain, a Scottish mechanic. In 1843, less than seven years after the invention of the telegraph by American Samuel F.B. Morse, Bain received a British patent for “improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs.” Bain’s fax transmitter was designed to scan a two-dimensional surface (Bain proposed metal type as the surface) by means of a stylus mounted on a pendulum. The invention was never demonstrated.
Frederick Bakewell, an English physicist, was the first to actually demonstrate facsimile transmission. The demonstration took place in London at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Bakewell’s system differed somewhat from Bain’s in that images were transmitted and received on cylinders—a method that was widely practiced through the 1960s. At the transmitter the image to be scanned was written with varnish or some other nonconducting material on tinfoil, wrapped around the transmitter cylinder, and then scanned by a conductive stylus that, like Bain’s stylus, was mounted to a pendulum. The cylinder rotated at a uniform rate by means of a clock mechanism. At the receiver a similar pendulum-driven stylus marked chemically treated paper with an electric current as the receiving cylinder rotated.
The first commercial facsimile system was introduced between Lyon and Paris, France, in 1863 by Giovanni Caselli, an Italian inventor. The first successful use of optical scanning and transmission of photographs was demonstrated by Arthur Korn of Germany in 1902. Korn’s transmitter employed a selenium photocell to sense an image wrapped on a transparent glass cylinder; at the receiver the transmitted image was recorded on photographic film. By 1906 Korn’s equipment was put into regular service for transmission of newspaper photographs between Munich and Berlin via telegraph circuits.
Analog telephone facsimile
Further deployment of fax transmission had to await the development of improved long-distance telephone service. Between 1920 and 1923 the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) worked on telephone facsimile technology, and in 1924 the telephotography machine was used to send pictures from political conventions in Cleveland, Ohio, and Chicago to New York City for publication in newspapers. The telephotography machine employed transparent cylindrical drums, which were driven by motors that were synchronized between transmitter and receiver. At the transmitter a positive transparent print was placed on the drum and was scanned by a vacuum-tube photoelectric cell. The output of the photocell modulated a 1,800-hertz carrier signal, which was subsequently sent over the telephone line. At the receiver an unexposed negative was progressively illuminated by a narrowly focused light beam, the intensity of which corresponded to the output of the photoelectric cell in the transmitter. The AT&T fax system was capable of transmitting a 12.7-by-17.8-cm (5-by-7-inch) photograph in seven minutes with a resolution of 4 lines per mm (100 lines per inch).
Further advancements in fax technology occurred during the 1930s and ’40s. In 1948 Western Union introduced its desk-fax service, which was based on a small office machine. Some 50,000 desk-fax units were built until the service was discontinued in the 1960s.
Over the years, different manufacturers adopted operability standards that allowed their machines to communicate with one another, but there was no worldwide standard that enabled American machines, for example, to connect to European fax machines. In 1974 the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT) issued its first worldwide fax standard, known as Group 1 fax. Group 1 fax machines were capable of transmitting a one-page document in about six minutes with a resolution of 4 lines per mm using an analog signal format. This standard was followed in 1976 by a CCITT Group 2 fax standard, which permitted transmission of a one-page document in about three minutes using an improved modulation scheme.
Digital facsimile
Although the Group 2 fax machines proved to be successful in business applications where electronic transmission of documents containing nontextual information such as drawings, diagrams, and signatures was required, the slow transmission rate and the cost of the terminals ultimately limited the growth of fax services. In response, the CCITT developed standards for a new class of fax machine, now known as Group 3, which would use digital transmission of images through modems. With the encoding of a scanned image into binary digits, or bits, various image-compression methods (also known as source encoding or redundancy reduction) could be employed to reduce the number of bits required to represent the original image. By coupling a good source code with a high-speed modem, a Group 3 fax machine could reduce the time required to transmit a single page to less than one minute—a threefold improvement in transmission time over the older Group 2 fax machines. The Group 3 standard was adopted by the CCITT in 1980.
Originally, Group 3 fax was intended for transmission at data rates between 2,400 and 9,600 bits per second. With advances in voice-band modem technology, data transmission rates of 28,800 bits per second and above became common. Between 1981 and 1984 the CCITT sponsored the development of a high-speed fax service that was adopted as the Group 4 standard in 1984. Group 4 fax was intended to supplant Group 3 fax by permitting error-free transmission of documents over digital networks, such as the integrated services digital network (ISDN), at speeds up to 64,000 bits per second. At such rates, transmission time for a single page could be reduced to less than 10 seconds. Group 4 fax has been deployed in areas of the world where ISDN lines are readily available (e.g., Japan and France). However, since other areas (e.g., the United States) do not have many ISDN lines installed in the local telephone loop, Group 4 fax machines must also support Group 3 fax for transmission over analog lines.
David E. Borth