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Cleopatra Lived Closer to the Computer Age than to the Pyramids, and Other Atypical History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 30, 2019 33 min

10. The Fax Machine is As Old as the Oregon Trail

The fax machine was around when people were trekking the Oregon Trail. Imgur

It sounds unbelievable, but the fax machine is as old as the Oregon Trail. In 1843, the Oregon Trail was finally completed by an enterprising wagon train of about 1000 migrants. After a difficult trek, they cleared a final segment to make the trail passable by wagon all the way from the Missouri River to Oregon. That same year, a Scottish inventor named Alexander Bains secured a British patent for what he termed the “Electric Printing Telegraph“.

The invention relied on a clock to sync the movement of two pendulums to scan a message line by line. Using a metal pin arrangement in a cylinder, Bain devised a system whereby on-off electric pulses would scan the pins, send a message across wires, and reproduce it at a receiving station far away. That device became the forerunner of the modern fax machine. It eventually led to the first commercially practical telefax service between Paris and Lyon in 1861 – 11 years before the invention of the telephone.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.