September 11, 2025 • 18 mins
The idea of a machine that transmits a piece of paper over a telephone line seems almost comically antiquated. But for decades, the fax machine was a technological titan—a ubiquitous and indispensable tool that revolutionized how we do business and communicate over long distances.
Join us on this episode of "Dirt Nap City" as we unspool the fascinating history of the fax machine. We'll start in the mid-19th century with the almost-forgotten Scottish inventor Alexander Bain, whose "electric printing telegraph" laid the groundwork for what would become a global sensation over a century later. We’ll trace the slow, steady development of the technology, from its early use in transmitting weather maps and wire photos to its eventual mainstream adoption.
The true golden age of the fax machine, however, began in the 1980s. We'll explore how companies turned a bulky, expensive piece of equipment into a compact, affordable, and essential office staple. We'll share stories of how faxes became the lifeblood of corporate communication, a rapid-fire way to send contracts, memos, and even personal messages across the world in minutes. This machine was the original "instant" communication device, a harbinger of the real-time world we now inhabit.
But as with all great empires, the fax machine's reign was not to last. We'll delve into the factors that led to its decline, from the rise of the internet and email in the mid-1990s to the eventual supremacy of digital documents. We'll discuss the moments when the fax became a symbol of corporate bureaucracy and a punchline for outdated technology.
So plug in your landline, listen for the beep, and join us as we send a final transmission to the incredible, and ultimately doomed, world of the fax machine. It’s a story of innovation, cultural impact, and the relentless march of technological progress.
Drop us a quick text and we’ll reply in the next episode!
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kelly (00:07):
Imagine you hear a loud screeching noise, kind of thing.
But it goes on and it's got thishigh pitched squeal that I can't
even do because I can't I can'tsing in that register. That's
(00:31):
something that was pretty commonin offices all around the US not
too long ago. Now it wasn't adial up modem, although it had a
similar kind of vibe. You knowwhat I'm talking about here?
Alex (00:46):
Well, you didn't do a great impression of that, and it
wasn't a dial up modem. No, wasit? Oh, was it a dot matrix
printer?
Kelly (00:59):
No, no. I'm talking about the mating call of the
magnificent and mysterious faxmachine.
Alex (01:05):
Oh, yeah, fax machine Sure. Did you ever,
Kelly (01:09):
did you ever pick up a phone line when somebody was
sending a fax? Yeah, yeah. Youknow that sound I'm talking
about,
Alex (01:19):
yeah, similar to a dial Yes, yeah,
Kelly (01:22):
very similar to a dial up modem. Now, fax is short for
facsimile, sure, which you knowthe origin of that word.
Alex (01:31):
It just means, like a copy, right? Like it's Latin
Kelly (01:37):
from fac simile, which is F, A, C, S, i, m, I, L, E. It
means to make similar okay, butfax is the shortened version.
But here's the real questionthat's gonna blow your mind. Do
you know when the fax machinewas invented?
Alex (01:53):
Well, that's what I was just gonna say. I have a feeling
the fax machine is older than wethink, and the technology quite
amazing pre computers. Reallypretty, pretty amazing
technology, because then we haveto think about like fax, like
the original ones with fax paperand all that kind of stuff.
(02:14):
Yeah, I'm guessing that the faxmachine was invented like in the
50s or 60s,
Kelly (02:25):
19 or 1819? 1950s, or 60s? Nope, nope. You got to go
back a little further than that.
Let me just give you a littlebit of context. So the telegraph
was invented in the 1830s bySamuel Morse.
Alex (02:41):
That's the one with the dots and the dashes, yes.
Kelly (02:46):
Morse code, sure, over the telegraph. And that was, you
know, kind of an easy way. Theway that worked is, it was just
either electricity on orelectricity off. It was binary,
right? The fax machine, whichwas called at the time, the
electric printing telegraph wasinvented in 1843, what? Yeah.
(03:09):
Let that soak in for a second.
Wow. And it was invented by aguy named Alexander Bain, who
was a Scottish clock maker. Hewasn't a tech mogul, he wasn't a
he wasn't, it was kind of aninventor, but he was more of a
clock maker. He also inventedthe first electric clock,
Alex (03:27):
wow, and had the same purpose to transmit a piece of
paper to somebody else.
Kelly (03:34):
The Electric printing telegraph was based on all
things pendulums. So if you canimagine a big pendulum that's
hanging, you know, from from theceiling or from a point above,
and it's weighted so that it sothat it slides back and forth,
this pendulum would have astylus on it, and the way you
(03:56):
prepared the facts to send it,or the electric printing
telegraph to send is you had aspecial piece of paper, that
paper was treated with achemical that was conductive,
right? So it was electricallyconductive, and then what you
would do is you would actuallydraw on it with another chemical
(04:17):
that was not electricallyconductive. So what you've got
is you've got the whole paper isconductive, and then you've,
you've drawn this pattern on itthat does not conduct
electricity. Is that makingsense so far? Yeah, yeah. So the
pendulum had a stylus on it thatwas, was also conductive of
electricity, and it would runover the paper. So it would, it
(04:39):
would go back and forth acrossthe paper. And whenever it got
to the point where the drawingwas where it wasn't conducting
electricity, it would nottransmit electricity. At that
point, it would stop for thatbrief moment. The key was this
guy, Alexander Bain, set up asecond pendulum that would write
(04:59):
onto. The same kind of paper,but it was receiving its
instructions from the firstpiece of paper and the first
pendulum, he would synchronizethese pendulums so they swung at
exactly the same speed and thesame distance. And as the first
one would go, it would basicallytransmit where there was an
electrical current, and then itwould stop just for ever so
(05:21):
briefly where there wasn't one,and the one that was writing the
receiving end would do theopposite, only, instead of
reading, it was writing. Oh,that's
Alex (05:31):
cool. All the best technology at one point has a
stylus involved, and then stylusalways gets phased
Kelly (05:37):
out. Yeah, yeah. We should talk about the stylus
sometime. But, yeah,
Alex (05:41):
record players have styluses, right? It was like,
Kelly (05:46):
it was like, basically this magical way of recreating a
piece of art. You could youcould do text, you could do a
drawing, you could do anything,but you had to do is very fussy.
It had a lot of things that hadto go into it. So if you can
imagine, you know, it wasn'tregular ink and paper. It was a
metal plate with usually made ofcopper, and the ink was this non
(06:09):
conductive material like shellacor varnish, and it really
required everything to goperfectly to work. Yeah, I'm
guessing it wasn't very common.
No, as a matter of fact, it kindof, it was demonstrated, and it
was sort of magical for thereceiver to see exactly what was
drawn on the sender's paper.
(06:31):
Yeah, but it was one of thosemachines that was kind of almost
like, Wow. I can't believe theyI can't believe this actually
works, but it was clunky, slowand expensive, yeah, and and had
to be synchronized perfectly inorder for the two pendulums to
work. So now, now Bane being aclock maker, synchronizing the
(06:53):
pendulums was actually right uphis alley, right as a clock
maker. So it wasn't a commercialhit. It didn't really take off.
And, you know, it's funny thatyou said that you were thinking
the 1950s 1960s 1940s orwhatever. Alexander Bain died
poor in 1877 this didn't reallymake him any money. But this
(07:16):
concept of being able totransmit a, I guess an image or
text or whatever remained. Andactually, the first commercial
use of this was in the 1860s inItaly, there was a physicist and
an Italian priest who developedthis thing that was called the
(07:37):
pan telegraph. And it was asimilar fax kind of thing, using
mechanical structures andelectricity going on and off,
much like Morse code, and it wasused by banks to verify
signatures. That was the initialuse case. So if somebody signed
something, the bank would knowcould look at it and see if it
was a authentic signature. In1924 the first transatlantic
(08:02):
facts happened. And you know whowas involved in that?
Alex (08:06):
Was it Bell? Calvin Coolidge? Oh, Calvin Coolidge,
one
Kelly (08:10):
of the coolest names ever. A picture of Calvin
Coolidge was sent from New Yorkto London. Really? Yep, yep.
Took 20 minutes.
Alex (08:20):
That was how he was involved. Or was he there? Like,
Kelly (08:23):
I don't actually know.
Maybe they just happen to have apicture of you got a picture
lying around? Yeah, I gotCoolidge here. So 1924 20
minutes to send this pictureacross the pond. In 1944 they
were using the same technologyto transmit maps and things like
that during D Day and duringWorld War Two, really? I mean,
(08:45):
if you think about it, how elsewould you transmit an image of a
map at that time?
Alex (08:51):
Yeah, that's crazy, though, that we just you
wouldn't think that it was, itseems like the kind of thing
that wouldn't have been inventeduntil later. Yeah,
Kelly (09:00):
yeah. Well, this, this was all still very crude, still
very much a niche kind of thing.
But in the 60s, Xerox actuallywas one of the big companies to
sort of industrialize it, makeit small enough to fit in an
office and make it, you know,six pages a minute, or something
like that. So it was, I'm sorry,actually six, six minutes per
(09:21):
page was how long it took theXerox tele copier. So you're
waiting six minutes you get onepage. Japan definitely had a lot
of technology that was startingto make it cheaper, more
reliable. This was kind of morein the 70s and 80s, and then it
kind of peaked in the mid 90s.
(09:45):
The the fax machine became inevery office it, you know, was
having its own dedicated phonelines. And again, this is a
problem it. It did transmit overa regular phone line, but if you
think about it, sharing a. Phoneline with a fax machine is not
cool, right,
Alex (10:03):
right? Because if you call it and it picks up, then you
subject it to that tone that weopen with.
Kelly (10:09):
Not only that, there was some of the original spam that
was coming into people's inboxeswas coming via fax. You imagine
you've just loaded up your tonerand your fax machine, you've got
your paper all loaded in, andthen you hear that noise, and
then you start receiving thisfax, or maybe you're out of the
office, and you come back toreceive a 50 page junk fax.
(10:30):
Yeah, that's rough. They werestill using that kind of thermal
paper at the time, and so therewas a lot of kind of chemical
smells. Comes big, heavy roll,kind of like the mimeograph.
Remember the mimeograph? Dittopaper, ditto paper. So nobody
(10:51):
can say for sure, but theestimated peak of the facts you
want to guess what year it was,
Alex (10:56):
probably night I'm saying 1992
Kelly (11:01):
little later, 97 really is what they're saying. Yeah,
because that's around the timewhen email was starting to be
used. Businesses were startingto, you know, it actually kind
of got to the point where therewas this office protocol where
(11:22):
somebody would email something,and then the corporate policy
was they were supposed to faxit. So then they would say,
Well, let me fax it to youremail. I mean, it was just kind
of crazy, right,
Alex (11:32):
right, right? And there was, I remember, yeah, there
still is some. Every now andthen you'll run into something
that, yeah, that will require afax. Like, really,
Kelly (11:41):
right? So you have to have an E fax number, which is
sort of like a digital zombie ofthe fax machine, right? So late
90s, the internet took off. Alsothe invention of the scanner,
like the flatbed scanner, so youcould scan and then the scanner
printer, that was kind of thenail in the coffin.
Alex (12:00):
That was the last fax machines were the three in one,
right,
Kelly (12:03):
right, right. But then all of a sudden, everybody
realized, why do I need to takeup a phone line when I can just
scan this and email it or printit on the other end, the first
anti spam laws were used duringthe late 80s to kind of help
protect people from gettingthose jump junk faxes. They made
them made sending them actuallyillegal, but really it was,
(12:30):
they're still now. Now sometimeswe pick dead ends that still
actually exist, and fax machinesdo still exist. They're still
around, but you know whatthey're used for today,
primarily what industries usethem?
Alex (12:42):
Probably legal law firms, yes, legal
Kelly (12:45):
and health care. And a lot of that has to do with like
compliance laws, HIPAA laws andprivacy laws and stuff like
that. The fax machine is stillconsidered more secure in a lot
of ways, but if you think aboutit. I mean, if you're in a
doctor's office and somebodyfaxes you somebody else's
medical records, what's to stopsomebody walking by from just
(13:08):
picking up that
Alex (13:09):
paper? Right? Right?
That's not HIPAA compliant now,
Kelly (13:13):
well, you have to have protocols in place, I guess, to
make it HIPAA compliant. Butit's, it's definitely the
healthcare system and the thelegal you know, the lawyers
offices that are keeping itawake, and I guess the
government, too, still uses somepaper trails for faxes. You know
Alex (13:30):
what? I've always wondered. You know that company
called Carfax? Yes, yes. And theidea is you can get information
about a used car that you'reabout to buy. You just feed it
the VIN number, and it givesyou, like, the history of the
car. I wonder if so, that'scompanies. It's C, A, R, F, A,
X, yeah. And I don't know ifit's because it's it's facts
(13:55):
about the car, or if, when itfirst started, they would send
you a fax about
Kelly (14:01):
the with the facts they would fax you with a fax,
Alex (14:05):
right? I've, every time I see a CARFAX commercial, I get
more invested in that question.
I've even looked it up, but I'vecouldn't find anything.
Kelly (14:15):
Oh, yeah, that's that is a mystery for another time, my
friend. But yeah, when's thelast time you sent a fax or
received a fax,
Alex (14:22):
embarrassingly, probably, probably since you have, it
seems like I'm always runninginto something where somebody
requires a fax copy of somethingwe just had. We had a fax
machine until, gosh, last two orthree years at your house, yeah.
(14:42):
I mean, not using it, justtaking up space. You know, was
Kelly (14:45):
it within 15 feet of you
Alex (14:47):
and not currently, but yeah, I mean, I guarantee we
didn't, well, I bet you wedidn't throw it away. I bet you
it's in this house somewhere
Kelly (14:55):
along with your 100 disc, CD changer. Yeah, that's 15
feet. Yeah. Well, that's thefacts. Jack, Yeah, glad that
one's gone. You.
Unknown (15:26):
Is older than the phones we hold, a model of
wires, brave and bold, asymphony of screeches, a digital
screen, the fax machine, theunsung dream. Yeah, fax it over,
send it through paper. Whispers,just for you. Oh to the mighty
(15:51):
fax machine.
The I spat out memos, contractstoo, in offices where plants
(16:18):
barely grew, it hummedwith pride. It knew its worth,
connecting worlds across theearth. Now it waits
a relic, unseen, a dusty ghost,a fax machine, and fax it over,
send it through people, whispersjust
(16:42):
for for you, beef and buzz. Oh,what a scene.
Oh to the mighty fax machine,Beanie
Babies and floppy disks, the 90sgold nostalgia risks, but in the
corner stillSerena lives the legend, the fax
(17:02):
machine. The fax machine.
(17:22):
Yeah, up, send it through paper.
Whispers just for you beef andbuzzing over to the Mighty fax
machine. Now, fax it over. Justfor you.
Imagine you hear a loud screeching noise, kind of thing.
But it goes on and it's got thishigh pitched squeal that I can't
even do because I can't I can'tsing in that register. That's
(00:31):
something that was pretty commonin offices all around the US not
too long ago. Now it wasn't adial up modem, although it had a
similar kind of vibe. You knowwhat I'm talking about here?
Alex (00:46):
Well, you didn't do a great impression of that, and it
wasn't a dial up modem. No, wasit? Oh, was it a dot matrix
printer?
Kelly (00:59):
No, no. I'm talking about the mating call of the
magnificent and mysterious faxmachine.
Alex (01:05):
Oh, yeah, fax machine Sure. Did you ever,
Kelly (01:09):
did you ever pick up a phone line when somebody was
sending a fax? Yeah, yeah. Youknow that sound I'm talking
about,
Alex (01:19):
yeah, similar to a dial Yes, yeah,
Kelly (01:22):
very similar to a dial up modem. Now, fax is short for
facsimile, sure, which you knowthe origin of that word.
Alex (01:31):
It just means, like a copy, right? Like it's Latin
Kelly (01:37):
from fac simile, which is F, A, C, S, i, m, I, L, E. It
means to make similar okay, butfax is the shortened version.
But here's the real questionthat's gonna blow your mind. Do
you know when the fax machinewas invented?
Alex (01:53):
Well, that's what I was just gonna say. I have a feeling
the fax machine is older than wethink, and the technology quite
amazing pre computers. Reallypretty, pretty amazing
technology, because then we haveto think about like fax, like
the original ones with fax paperand all that kind of stuff.
(02:14):
Yeah, I'm guessing that the faxmachine was invented like in the
50s or 60s,
Kelly (02:25):
19 or 1819? 1950s, or 60s? Nope, nope. You got to go
back a little further than that.
Let me just give you a littlebit of context. So the telegraph
was invented in the 1830s bySamuel Morse.
Alex (02:41):
That's the one with the dots and the dashes, yes.
Kelly (02:46):
Morse code, sure, over the telegraph. And that was, you
know, kind of an easy way. Theway that worked is, it was just
either electricity on orelectricity off. It was binary,
right? The fax machine, whichwas called at the time, the
electric printing telegraph wasinvented in 1843, what? Yeah.
(03:09):
Let that soak in for a second.
Wow. And it was invented by aguy named Alexander Bain, who
was a Scottish clock maker. Hewasn't a tech mogul, he wasn't a
he wasn't, it was kind of aninventor, but he was more of a
clock maker. He also inventedthe first electric clock,
Alex (03:27):
wow, and had the same purpose to transmit a piece of
paper to somebody else.
Kelly (03:34):
The Electric printing telegraph was based on all
things pendulums. So if you canimagine a big pendulum that's
hanging, you know, from from theceiling or from a point above,
and it's weighted so that it sothat it slides back and forth,
this pendulum would have astylus on it, and the way you
(03:56):
prepared the facts to send it,or the electric printing
telegraph to send is you had aspecial piece of paper, that
paper was treated with achemical that was conductive,
right? So it was electricallyconductive, and then what you
would do is you would actuallydraw on it with another chemical
(04:17):
that was not electricallyconductive. So what you've got
is you've got the whole paper isconductive, and then you've,
you've drawn this pattern on itthat does not conduct
electricity. Is that makingsense so far? Yeah, yeah. So the
pendulum had a stylus on it thatwas, was also conductive of
electricity, and it would runover the paper. So it would, it
(04:39):
would go back and forth acrossthe paper. And whenever it got
to the point where the drawingwas where it wasn't conducting
electricity, it would nottransmit electricity. At that
point, it would stop for thatbrief moment. The key was this
guy, Alexander Bain, set up asecond pendulum that would write
(04:59):
onto. The same kind of paper,but it was receiving its
instructions from the firstpiece of paper and the first
pendulum, he would synchronizethese pendulums so they swung at
exactly the same speed and thesame distance. And as the first
one would go, it would basicallytransmit where there was an
electrical current, and then itwould stop just for ever so
(05:21):
briefly where there wasn't one,and the one that was writing the
receiving end would do theopposite, only, instead of
reading, it was writing. Oh,that's
Alex (05:31):
cool. All the best technology at one point has a
stylus involved, and then stylusalways gets phased
Kelly (05:37):
out. Yeah, yeah. We should talk about the stylus
sometime. But, yeah,
Alex (05:41):
record players have styluses, right? It was like,
Kelly (05:46):
it was like, basically this magical way of recreating a
piece of art. You could youcould do text, you could do a
drawing, you could do anything,but you had to do is very fussy.
It had a lot of things that hadto go into it. So if you can
imagine, you know, it wasn'tregular ink and paper. It was a
metal plate with usually made ofcopper, and the ink was this non
(06:09):
conductive material like shellacor varnish, and it really
required everything to goperfectly to work. Yeah, I'm
guessing it wasn't very common.
No, as a matter of fact, it kindof, it was demonstrated, and it
was sort of magical for thereceiver to see exactly what was
drawn on the sender's paper.
(06:31):
Yeah, but it was one of thosemachines that was kind of almost
like, Wow. I can't believe theyI can't believe this actually
works, but it was clunky, slowand expensive, yeah, and and had
to be synchronized perfectly inorder for the two pendulums to
work. So now, now Bane being aclock maker, synchronizing the
(06:53):
pendulums was actually right uphis alley, right as a clock
maker. So it wasn't a commercialhit. It didn't really take off.
And, you know, it's funny thatyou said that you were thinking
the 1950s 1960s 1940s orwhatever. Alexander Bain died
poor in 1877 this didn't reallymake him any money. But this
(07:16):
concept of being able totransmit a, I guess an image or
text or whatever remained. Andactually, the first commercial
use of this was in the 1860s inItaly, there was a physicist and
an Italian priest who developedthis thing that was called the
(07:37):
pan telegraph. And it was asimilar fax kind of thing, using
mechanical structures andelectricity going on and off,
much like Morse code, and it wasused by banks to verify
signatures. That was the initialuse case. So if somebody signed
something, the bank would knowcould look at it and see if it
was a authentic signature. In1924 the first transatlantic
(08:02):
facts happened. And you know whowas involved in that?
Alex (08:06):
Was it Bell? Calvin Coolidge? Oh, Calvin Coolidge,
one
Kelly (08:10):
of the coolest names ever. A picture of Calvin
Coolidge was sent from New Yorkto London. Really? Yep, yep.
Took 20 minutes.
Alex (08:20):
That was how he was involved. Or was he there? Like,
Kelly (08:23):
I don't actually know.
Maybe they just happen to have apicture of you got a picture
lying around? Yeah, I gotCoolidge here. So 1924 20
minutes to send this pictureacross the pond. In 1944 they
were using the same technologyto transmit maps and things like
that during D Day and duringWorld War Two, really? I mean,
(08:45):
if you think about it, how elsewould you transmit an image of a
map at that time?
Alex (08:51):
Yeah, that's crazy, though, that we just you
wouldn't think that it was, itseems like the kind of thing
that wouldn't have been inventeduntil later. Yeah,
Kelly (09:00):
yeah. Well, this, this was all still very crude, still
very much a niche kind of thing.
But in the 60s, Xerox actuallywas one of the big companies to
sort of industrialize it, makeit small enough to fit in an
office and make it, you know,six pages a minute, or something
like that. So it was, I'm sorry,actually six, six minutes per
(09:21):
page was how long it took theXerox tele copier. So you're
waiting six minutes you get onepage. Japan definitely had a lot
of technology that was startingto make it cheaper, more
reliable. This was kind of morein the 70s and 80s, and then it
kind of peaked in the mid 90s.
(09:45):
The the fax machine became inevery office it, you know, was
having its own dedicated phonelines. And again, this is a
problem it. It did transmit overa regular phone line, but if you
think about it, sharing a. Phoneline with a fax machine is not
cool, right,
Alex (10:03):
right? Because if you call it and it picks up, then you
subject it to that tone that weopen with.
Kelly (10:09):
Not only that, there was some of the original spam that
was coming into people's inboxeswas coming via fax. You imagine
you've just loaded up your tonerand your fax machine, you've got
your paper all loaded in, andthen you hear that noise, and
then you start receiving thisfax, or maybe you're out of the
office, and you come back toreceive a 50 page junk fax.
(10:30):
Yeah, that's rough. They werestill using that kind of thermal
paper at the time, and so therewas a lot of kind of chemical
smells. Comes big, heavy roll,kind of like the mimeograph.
Remember the mimeograph? Dittopaper, ditto paper. So nobody
(10:51):
can say for sure, but theestimated peak of the facts you
want to guess what year it was,
Alex (10:56):
probably night I'm saying 1992
Kelly (11:01):
little later, 97 really is what they're saying. Yeah,
because that's around the timewhen email was starting to be
used. Businesses were startingto, you know, it actually kind
of got to the point where therewas this office protocol where
(11:22):
somebody would email something,and then the corporate policy
was they were supposed to faxit. So then they would say,
Well, let me fax it to youremail. I mean, it was just kind
of crazy, right,
Alex (11:32):
right, right? And there was, I remember, yeah, there
still is some. Every now andthen you'll run into something
that, yeah, that will require afax. Like, really,
Kelly (11:41):
right? So you have to have an E fax number, which is
sort of like a digital zombie ofthe fax machine, right? So late
90s, the internet took off. Alsothe invention of the scanner,
like the flatbed scanner, so youcould scan and then the scanner
printer, that was kind of thenail in the coffin.
Alex (12:00):
That was the last fax machines were the three in one,
right,
Kelly (12:03):
right, right. But then all of a sudden, everybody
realized, why do I need to takeup a phone line when I can just
scan this and email it or printit on the other end, the first
anti spam laws were used duringthe late 80s to kind of help
protect people from gettingthose jump junk faxes. They made
them made sending them actuallyillegal, but really it was,
(12:30):
they're still now. Now sometimeswe pick dead ends that still
actually exist, and fax machinesdo still exist. They're still
around, but you know whatthey're used for today,
primarily what industries usethem?
Alex (12:42):
Probably legal law firms, yes, legal
Kelly (12:45):
and health care. And a lot of that has to do with like
compliance laws, HIPAA laws andprivacy laws and stuff like
that. The fax machine is stillconsidered more secure in a lot
of ways, but if you think aboutit. I mean, if you're in a
doctor's office and somebodyfaxes you somebody else's
medical records, what's to stopsomebody walking by from just
(13:08):
picking up that
Alex (13:09):
paper? Right? Right?
That's not HIPAA compliant now,
Kelly (13:13):
well, you have to have protocols in place, I guess, to
make it HIPAA compliant. Butit's, it's definitely the
healthcare system and the thelegal you know, the lawyers
offices that are keeping itawake, and I guess the
government, too, still uses somepaper trails for faxes. You know
Alex (13:30):
what? I've always wondered. You know that company
called Carfax? Yes, yes. And theidea is you can get information
about a used car that you'reabout to buy. You just feed it
the VIN number, and it givesyou, like, the history of the
car. I wonder if so, that'scompanies. It's C, A, R, F, A,
X, yeah. And I don't know ifit's because it's it's facts
(13:55):
about the car, or if, when itfirst started, they would send
you a fax about
Kelly (14:01):
the with the facts they would fax you with a fax,
Alex (14:05):
right? I've, every time I see a CARFAX commercial, I get
more invested in that question.
I've even looked it up, but I'vecouldn't find anything.
Kelly (14:15):
Oh, yeah, that's that is a mystery for another time, my
friend. But yeah, when's thelast time you sent a fax or
received a fax,
Alex (14:22):
embarrassingly, probably, probably since you have, it
seems like I'm always runninginto something where somebody
requires a fax copy of somethingwe just had. We had a fax
machine until, gosh, last two orthree years at your house, yeah.
(14:42):
I mean, not using it, justtaking up space. You know, was
Kelly (14:45):
it within 15 feet of you
Alex (14:47):
and not currently, but yeah, I mean, I guarantee we
didn't, well, I bet you wedidn't throw it away. I bet you
it's in this house somewhere
Kelly (14:55):
along with your 100 disc, CD changer. Yeah, that's 15
feet. Yeah. Well, that's thefacts. Jack, Yeah, glad that
one's gone. You.
Unknown (15:26):
Is older than the phones we hold, a model of
wires, brave and bold, asymphony of screeches, a digital
screen, the fax machine, theunsung dream. Yeah, fax it over,
send it through paper. Whispers,just for you. Oh to the mighty
(15:51):
fax machine.
The I spat out memos, contractstoo, in offices where plants
(16:18):
barely grew, it hummedwith pride. It knew its worth,
connecting worlds across theearth. Now it waits
a relic, unseen, a dusty ghost,a fax machine, and fax it over,
send it through people, whispersjust
(16:42):
for for you, beef and buzz. Oh,what a scene.
Oh to the mighty fax machine,Beanie
Babies and floppy disks, the 90sgold nostalgia risks, but in the
corner stillSerena lives the legend, the fax
(17:02):
machine. The fax machine.
(17:22):
Yeah, up, send it through paper.
Whispers just for you beef andbuzzing over to the Mighty fax
machine. Now, fax it over. Justfor you.
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