The process was slow, but it represented a major technological step. In the late 1970s, Japanese companies entered the market, and soon a new generation of faster, smaller and more efficient fax machines became available. In 1918 H. Nyquist began investigating ways to adapt telephone circuits for picture transmission. The first fax images were 5x7 photographs sent to Manhattan from Chicago and Cleveland and took seven minutes each to transmit. Facsimile Transmission, or fax, communications system for the electrical transmission of printed material, photographs, or drawings.
Facsimile transmission is accomplished by radio, telephone, or undersea cable.
The essential parts of a fax system are a transmitting device that translates the graphic material into electrical impulses according to a set pattern, and a synchronized receiving device that retranslates these impulses and prints a facsimile copy. In a typical system the fax scanner consists of a rotating cylinder, a source projecting a narrow beam of light, and a photoelectric cell. The copy to be transmitted is wrapped around the cylinder and is scanned by the light beam, which moves along the cylinder as it revolves. The output of the photoelectric cell is amplified and transmitted to the receiving end, where a similar cylinder, covered with specially impregnated paper, revolves in synchronism with the transmitting cylinder. A light of varying intensity moves along the rotation cylinder and darkens the paper by chemically reproducing the pattern of the original.