Nancy Stubbs (Editor:Rachel Chertkoff)

Can something patented more than 150 years ago by a Scottish physicist using telegraph technology be considered an emerging technology today? Some people might say no, but those of us who say yes, marvel at the continuing development and evolution of facsimile technology, its practicality, ease of use and widespread popularity.

The beauty of fax is in its simplicity for the user. Common fax transmission takes place over an ordinary telephone line; a hard copy of a transmission is fed into the machine, the sending machine calls a receiving machine, the two connect, send and receive a fax, then disconnect (Sih 1993). There are conventional fax machines, multi-function devices and Internet faxing (although this is in its beginning stages). Conventional fax machines consist of a scanner, a printer and a keypad for dialing. Some have: document feeders, handsets, sheet cutters, memory and stored number dialing, relay features, delayed transmission abilities, polling features, security features, Error Correction Mode (ECM), computer interface, and Modified Modified Read (MMR) Compression (Avery 1997).

It took 100 years, from the 1840s to the 1940s, for the fax to leave telegraph lines and dedicated transmission facilities behind (Sih 1993). In the 1960s, it became electrically connected to the telephone network, allowing it to automatically dial to originate a call and to detect ringing answers. High-speed data communication modem technology and integrated circuit technology was developed in the 1970s. This enabled the development of digital facsimile and led to the increase of fax practicality and use (Sih 1993). However, the continued use of telephone lines has inhibited the advancement of the technology's cost-effectiveness. Although the global carrier market is rapidly changing to accommodate deregulation in key markets, prices are not dropping fast enough for users to afford the volume of business they require (Warren and Woodall 1997).

The cost of the actual equipment is coming down and making itself more widely accessible to business as well as individuals. Low-cost, mass manufacturing from Japanese manufacturers made faxes widely affordable and forced U.S. manufacturers to follow suit. Some of the companies involved in the production and development of fax machines are Canon, Sharp, Ricoh, Toshiba and Brother. Brother offers a good example of price ranges. At the top end is the $999.00 Brother MFC-7000FC, a multi-function machine. In addition to being a plain paper fax machine, it is also a PC fax machine, a color 720 dot-per-inch printer, a 1,200 by 1,200 dot-per-inch scanner, a color enlargement and reduction copier, a digital voice message center and a video capture system. At the other end of the spectrum is the $299.00 Brother Intellifax 1270, a stand-alone fax machine with a connector that allows you to add Brother’s Missing Link, which turns the fax machine into a modem, scanner and printer for an additional $100.00. For more information about fax machines, check out Fax Express at [http://www.faxexpress.com] (Magid 1997).

Fax use tends to fall into two categories: broadcast and on-demand. Broadcast fax is most often used to send the same document to many recipients, similar to a mass mailing. Fax on-demand is mostly used to send different pieces of information to the same or limited recipients (Sih 1993 and Mummert 1997). Faxes are also convenient for sending short amounts of printed information within a few minutes send to an office that is closed, sending one-way messages, confirming what was said in a phone message, and bypassing difficulties caused by time differences in long distance calls (Munger 1993).

Faxing is one of the most frequently used methods of communication for transmitting messages or documents on a daily basis, due to its cost and capability of easily transmitting hard copies. To help cut costs further facsimile companies are introducing machines equipped with new, speedier modems, improved print quality capabilities, connections to company-wide computer networks and other features (Warren 1997). An alternative way to cut costs is to switch to the Internet as a carrier for faxes. Companies with high volume fax traffic can cut their phone bills by as much as fifty per cent (Shillingford 1997). Systems for Internet use are flooding the market. One example is the UUFAx, which will include Internet-to-fax, fax-to-fax, and fax-to-Internet electronic mailbox options. Two U.S. phone companies, MCI and USA Global Link, introduced Internet fax services by the end of 1997 (Upton 1997 and Warren 1997).

Standardization of fax equipment in the U.S. came in 1966 with the Electronics Industries Association (EIA) Standard RS-328, enabling diverse fax equipment to communicate. Soon CCITT (an international standards group) issued its recommendation on Group 1 fax that offered fax compatibility outside of North America. Users could now send and receive faxes nationally and internationally. In 1967, the Carterphone decision against AT&T allowed acoustic or inductive coupling of equipment to the public telephone network. This was the beginning of less expensive universal fax use (Sih 1993).

In 1978, the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. issued Rules and Regulations Part 68, paving the way for the direct connection of equipment to the telephone network. In 1980 CCITT issued its recommendation for Group 3 improvements allowing improved quality at lower prices. This combination touched off an explosion in the fax market. (Sih 1993).

Most of the big advances in fax growth have come with advances in the carrier technology for faxes (telegraph lines, telephone lines). Dr. Michael Noll, professor in the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California, believes the next logical big step is

for fax messages to be sent over the Internet, using their satellite connections as the carrier. You can check this out by using one of the on-line fax services, Internet Phone Co. at

[http://www.tpc.int/], that is free for sending faxes to many parts of the world.

Does the future of the fax depend on developments in technology, carrier technology, service offerings or government policies, or perhaps in continued convergence of technologies? We will have to wait and see, but what we do know is that the future is secure: there is no sign, at this time, of a downturn in the market for facsimile machines or their use. Faxes are people-friendly, technologically sound and here to stay - in one form or another.

Avery, S. (1997) ‘Use of the Internet has yet to impact fax sales’, Purchasing, 123(4).

Magid, L. J. (1997) ‘Which fax? First decide if you really need one’, Los Angeles Times, 5 November. Available: magid@latimes.com & http://www.larrysworld.com.

Mummert, H. (1997) ‘Getting there by fax’, Target Marketing, 20(9).

Munger, S. H. (1993) ‘International telexes & faxes’, in The international business communications desk reference. New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Brussels, Toronto, Mexico City: amacom, American Management Association.

Noll, M. (1998) Emerging Technology Lecture, Communications 533, Annenberg School for Communications, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.

Shillingford, J (1997) ‘Fax faces up to cut-price competitor’, The Financial Times, 17 September.

Sih, P.C.W. (1993) Fax Power, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Upton, G. (1997) ‘Offices in the sky take off’, The Financial Times, 29 September..

Warren, R and Woodall, C. (1997) ‘The Internet hosts a faxing frenzy’, Telephony, 233(7).

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