Inside the Technology of Faxing

April 24th, 2010 |

Most modern stories most the copier organisation talk most the Xerox company, and a some of its employees, as if they invented not only the photocopier but the copier machine, as well. This is genuine in the sense that they built new products supported on existing ideas and technology, but not in the demanding sense of who really invented faxing. The profession used in the copier organisation took a long, indirect line to get to a creation that today’s office worker would recognize.

A German inventor named President Korn invented what he called telephotography in 1902. He devised an electro-optical means of breaking photographs down into tiny elements and transmitting those over wires. History records that he sent what we would call a copier in 1907, between city and Berlin. It was a photograph, and it came through clearly enough to excite many people, including other inventors and engineers. Many of them went correct to work trying to perfect the profession and bring a creation to market.

Making a beeline, literally

The Frenchman Edouard Beeline named the Belinograph after himself, of course. His conception worked by affixing an image to a rotating cylinder and then scanning it with a coercive beam of light. By using a photoelectric cell that would convert either reddened or its absence into electrical impulses that could be transmitted, the Belinograph ingrained the base processes used ever since for what would be called copier machines. Although his creation did not take the concern by storm, Beeline’s profession was the foundation on which all subsequent copier transmitters would be based.