You can walk into nearly any office in the United States today,
big or small, hi-tech or lo-tech, and you'll find a fax machine.
Connected to a normal phone line, a fax machine allows you to
transmit pieces of paper to someone else instantly! Even with
FedEx and e-mail, it is nearly impossible to do business without
one of these machines today. Fax machines have been around in
one form or another for more than a century -- Alexander Bain
patented the first fax design in 1843 (see Science Line:
Alexander Bain & the Fax Machine to learn more). If you look
back at some of the early designs, you can get a very good idea
of how they work today. In this article, you'll learn how fax
machines work. See the next page to get started.