And even now, after the invention of computers and electronics, Bain s original concept is still the basis for modern facsimile machines. A fax machine scans an image, whether it be text or a photo, by reading a very small area of the image at a time. The receiver makes a mark on paper corresponding to the area on the original image. This process continues as the transmitting machine scans a series of small areas horizontally across the image, and transmits that information to the remote receiver. The transmitting fax then scans the next lower line and so on until the entire image has been scanned, digitized, and transmitted.
Facsimile telegraph is one of the oldest telegraph techniques.
Rudolf Hell introduced the Hellschreiber. The first users of facsimile were newspapers to transmit and receive photos from around the world. The next user of facsimile were the weather services around the world. The principle for facsimile transmission over wires was first patented as early as 1843, seven years after the invention of the electric telegraph, by Scottish psychologist Alexander Bain. Bain's invention used two electric pendulums, one at each end of the wire.