The following appears on biztechmagazine.com
The first widely available fax machine ushered in an era of office communications that surprisingly continues to this day, even as email and the smartphone have become ubiquitous.
By Phil Goldstein – When was the last time you faxed something to or from your office? Although the fax machine no longer holds a dominant place in business communications,many companies and organizations still use the fax to send documents and get work done.
Scottish inventor Alexander Bain received a U.S. patent for a chemical-mechanical facsimile machine in 1849, and as the BBC News notes, he is widely credited with inventing the precursor to the modern fax machine. However, the fax era did not really take off until Xerox introduced the Magnafax Telecopier, which started the mass production of such machines, according to the book Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine by Jonathan Coopersmith.
WHAT is the Magnafax Telecopier?
