A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DThe History of the Facsimile and SSTV 1843 - 1973Smoke and drum signals are believed to have been the earliest form of getting messages from one place to another. We owe development of fax to a Scottish inventor, Alexander Bain, who was granted a patent for his creation back in 1843. And even now, after the invention of computers and electronics, Bain's original concept is still the basis for modern facsimile machines. Facsimile (Fax) - a method of encoding data, transmitting it over the telephone lines or radio broadcast, and receiving hard (text) copy, line drawings, or photographs. 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 fax machine decides whether the area it is reading is light or dark and assigns the area a number such as "0" for white and "1" for dark. Then the fax transmits the number to a remote facsimile receiver (usually via telephone lines). 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.
1843 : Alexander Bains' Telegraph 1848 : Frederick Bakewell's shellac conducting roller 1860 : Giovanni Caselli's Pantelegraph - the first facsimile between Paris and Lyon 1898 : Hummel's Telediagraph - see separate article below 1903 : Arthur Korn's photoelectric telephotography 1913 : Edouard Belin's Belinograph 1922 : The first transatlantic facsimile service provided by RCA. 1925 : AT&T Wirephoto 1926 : RCA Radiophoto 1926 : Rudolf Hell's Hellschreiber. 1927 : The first Siemens-Karolus-Telefunken facsimile between Berlin and other European Cities 1947 : Alexander Muirhead's Facsimile 1958 : Copthorn MacDonald's (WOORX) SSTV (Slow-Scan Television) 1960 : The first SSTV test transmissions in the U.S.A. 1971 : Ham operators starting with facsimile transmissions in Germany 1972 : First SSTV transmissions in Germany 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.
Hummel's Telediagraph, 1898 The Telediagraph was one of several early fax-like devices sending pictures via telegraph lines. It was invented circa 1895 by Ernest A. Hummel, a watchmaker of St. Paul, Minnesota. The first machines were installed in the office of the New York Herald in 1898. By 1899, Hummel had improved the machine and the newspaper had machines in the offices ofthe Chicago Times Herald, the St. Louis Republic, the Boston Herald, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The system used synchronised rotating 8-inch drums, with a platinum stylus used as an electrode in the transmitter. The original image was drawn on 8x6" tin-foil using a non-conducting ink made from shellac mixed with alcohol. The image was received on carbon paper wrapped between two sheets of blank paper. When the electrode touched the tin-foil in the transmitter the circuit was closed; when it touched the shellac the circuit was open. The signal controlled a moving stylus in the receiver, making it touch or move back from the paper. At the end of each rotation a synchronising signal was sent, and the styluses in both machines moved 1/56" to the left before scanning the next line. The first picture sent was "an accurate picture of the first gun fired at Manila." The machine took 20-30 minutes to send the picture. Near-copies of this and similar mechanisms were in use until the 1970s, although transmission speeds were improved and photocells allowed plain paper originals and photographs to be transmitted. The basic principle was also applied to stencil-cutting machines for ink duplicators.
The original Telediagraph article is available from me [Marcus L. Rowland] on disk with illustrations (see my web page for details), and is now downloadable from a file server; send a message to games-request@monosys.com with the title "help" and no contents for the details.
Source: http://www.ffutures.demon.co.uk/ The above document is quite old and the information above regarding mail/website details etc may not necessarily be current in 2000 [Ed.]
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