The Surprising History (and Future) of the Fax Machine

Let's be honest: in an era of instant messaging, cloud storage, and video calls, hearing the word "fax" might bring to mind the screeching dial-up tones of the 1990s. You might even wonder why faxing is still around at all.

But the fax machine has a secret. Not only is it older than you think, it has also quietly evolved to fit into the modern digital world.

First, a little trivia: "fax" is actually short for "facsimile." Derived from the Latin fac simile, meaning "to make alike," a facsimile is an exact copy or reproduction of a document. And while the technology used to make those copies has changed drastically over the years, the need to send exact, secure copies of important documents hasn't gone anywhere.

Older Than the Telephone

It's easy to assume the fax machine was a byproduct of the telephone era, but it actually pre-dates it — by decades.

The very first patent for a fax machine was issued in May 1843 to Alexander Bain, a Scottish clockmaker. His "Electric Printing Telegraph" used synchronized clock pendulums to scan an image line by line with a stylus, transmitting it over telegraph wires to be recreated on chemically treated paper. Bain never commercialized the device, but the core idea — scanning a document line by line and reproducing it remotely — is still how every fax works today.

To put that into perspective: Bain patented his fax concept in 1843, thirty-three years before Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful telephone call in 1876. The fax also beat the light bulb, the radio, and the automobile to patent office.

A Quick Timeline: 1843 to Today

The road from Bain's laboratory to the office copy room took more than a century. The milestones along the way:

• 1843 — Alexander Bain patents the Electric Printing Telegraph, the conceptual ancestor of the fax machine.
• 1865 — Italian inventor Giovanni Caselli's "pantelegraph" launches the world's first commercial fax service between Paris and Lyon, transmitting handwriting and signatures over telegraph lines — eleven years before the telephone existed.
• 1935 — On January 1, the Associated Press sends the first news photograph over its new Wirephoto service to 47 newspapers across the United States, in minutes instead of days.
• 1964–1966 — Xerox introduces the LDX, the first commercialized modern fax machine, followed by the smaller Magnafax Telecopier, which sends a page in about six minutes over an ordinary phone line.
• 1980 — The CCITT Group 3 standard introduces digital compression, cutting transmission time to under a minute per page. It's still the standard fax machines use today.
• 1980s–90s — Powered by the Group 3 standard, the fax machine becomes a staple of corporate offices — and households — across the globe.

Why Do We Still Fax Today?

If we have email, why haven't we abandoned the facsimile entirely? The answer comes down to three major factors: Security, Compliance, and Standardization.

• It's Highly Secure: Unlike standard emails, which can be intercepted or hacked, traditional fax operates over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). This point-to-point transmission makes it incredibly difficult for third parties to intercept a document in transit.
• Legal & Regulatory Compliance: Under U.S. law (E-SIGN and UETA), faxed and typed electronic signatures are generally given equal legal weight — but many regulated industries still require or prefer fax because it produces a phone-line transmission record, and some acceptance rules are built around it. If you need that paper trail, our guide to faxing legal documents covers best practices and proof of transmission.
• Global Standardization: In many parts of the world, particularly in Japan and Germany, faxing remains a deeply ingrained and trusted standard for B2B communication. Sending a document across a border? See how to send an international fax online.

The numbers back this up: Communications of the ACM reports estimates of more than 17 billion faxed documents sent worldwide in 2019 — over 9 billion of them in U.S. healthcare alone. Faxing isn't a leftover; it's load-bearing infrastructure for regulated industries.

The Modern Facsimile: No Machine Required

Here is the best part: just because you need to send a fax doesn't mean you need to own a bulky machine, buy expensive toner, or pay for a dedicated landline phone cord.

The fax has evolved into the cloud. Today, you can send a legally binding fax directly from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop — the online service converts your document and delivers it over the phone network to the recipient's fax machine, no hardware required.

The good news is that sending a modern fax doesn't require jumping through hoops or committing to an expensive monthly subscription. When you find yourself needing to transmit a secure document, platforms like PerPageFax.com let you do it quickly and easily online, paying per page with no account. New to this? Our step-by-step guide to sending a fax online covers file formats, cover pages, and delivery confirmation in detail.

The Future of Fax

Fax isn't growing because people love the machine. It persists because phone-network delivery and the transmission record it produces are baked into the workflows of healthcare systems, courts, insurers, and tax authorities — and those requirements aren't disappearing overnight.

What is disappearing is the machine itself. The future of fax is cloud-based: upload a document, send it from any device, track delivery in real time, and skip the toner altogether. In other words, the next 180 years of fax probably won't involve a screeching dial-up tone at all — just the same reliable, legally recognized delivery, on demand. It's the traditional facsimile, updated for the digital age.