Posted on 08/06/2016 1:34:34 PM PDT by PROCON
Telegraphs came first.
From Wiki:
Wire transmission
Scottish inventor Alexander Bain worked on chemical mechanical fax type devices and in 1846 was able to reproduce graphic signs in laboratory experiments. He received British patent 9745 on May 27, 1843 for his “Electric Printing Telegraph.”[2] Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain’s design and demonstrated a telefax machine. The Pantelegraph was invented by the Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli. He introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon in 1865, some 11 years before the invention of the telephone.[3][4]
In 1881, English inventor Shelford Bidwell constructed the scanning phototelegraph that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing. Around 1900, German physicist Arthur Korn invented the Bildtelegraph, widespread in continental Europe especially, since a widely noticed transmission of a wanted-person photograph from Paris to London in 1908, used until the wider distribution of the radiofax. Its main competitors were the Bélinographe by Édouard Belin first, then since the 1930s the Hellschreiber, invented in 1929 by German inventor Rudolf Hell, a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission.
The 1888 invention of the telautograph by Elisha Grey marked a further development in fax technology, allowing users to send signatures over long distances, thus allowing the verification of identification or ownership over long distances.[5]
On May 19, 1924, scientists of the AT&T Corporation “by a new process of transmitting pictures by electricity” sent 15 photographs by telephone from Cleveland to New York City, such photos suitable for newspaper reproduction. Previously, photographs had been sent over the radio using this process.[6]
The Western Union “Deskfax” fax machine, announced in 1948, was a compact machine that fit comfortably on a desktop, using special spark printer paper.
I don't think a storage medium is much protection against a hacker.
Hackers exploit SW vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities caused by computer system connectivity to networks. If the SW is on a floppy, it doesn't make it more or less exploitable. If the computer system is connected to a network and accesses data from a floppy, that floppy is not going to be any protection from a hacker.
The military uses floppies because the military does not spend money to upgrade IT systems. That's 95% of the reason.
Fax machines invested in 1843 ... lol
My current job is with a rural medical clinic.
I don’t know if it is industry-wide, but faxing is the primary way that medical records are transferred between practices and hospitals in our area.
I’m moving us toward electronic faxing, because we currently receive faxes on paper, scan them, and then throw the paper away. When we send them, we print them, fax them, and then throw the paper away. Because these are medical records, we can’t just throw away the paper directly, but have to shred them first.
So I’ll get rid of a lot of time and expense by going electronic, but we’ll still be faxing.
I previously came from the real estate industry, where there was an industry wide, commonly used data interchange system. While this does exist in the medical industry, it’s not as mature or widely used (at least to my understanding). So we fax and fax and fax...
I'm down to my last cassette player. The others broke.
You like garage sales, huh? :-)
The term “ancient” was used for all the items listed...don’t know about you, but ancient is at least 2000 years back for me... And I’ll disagree on XP as well. Outdated perhaps. I’m guessing “Rachel” is some 20-year-old with no clue at all about tech trying to sound hip.
Oh, and I just got rid of our last XP machine two weeks ago. Still have a couple of Vista machines as spares because they couldn’t be updated to Win 10 and they work for some uses on the administrative side of the house...
When I sold my family home about 15 years ago we had lots of vinyl that went back to the 1950s.
I threw it all in the rubbish for the city to take it the next morning.
It disappeared in less than 2 hours.
.
except when you dial 1 digit wrong and send that sensitive medical document to points unknown...
Check your local thrift stores.
Picked up a working Kodak carousel slide projector and a couple of slide carousels for $10. Came with an extra bulb, too.
Lots of old tech there for cheap.
Well it’s got a nice camera, it’s small, it has my music library on it, I can stream talk radio all day, freep when I’m out and about, read a book, PDF manuals for all appliances, scanner, my alarm clock, flashlight...... Oh, and it makes and receives telephone calls.
It’s a useful tool. Kinda like my Leatherman, but not.
Every 3.5 floppy disk I ever used corrupted data. I’m glad they’re gone (the article mentions 8 inch disks). 5 1/4 disks never caused me a problem.
I have 4 record players. They are my babies. I also have a couple of high-end 80s cassette and CD components.
Far more enjoyable than clicking a file and playing it, and this is coming from a person that has 500+ GB of mp3s.
Likely it’ll just be a person and not a fax machine. And on the off chance you do hit a fax machine you can see that the remote ID is wrong, and it’s all stored in your history so you at least can look up the mistake.
Man you could have made a mint on all that old vinyl.
Absolutely true. Fax is a 19th century technology. And yes a 13 year old OS is ancient, it’s 5 major versions behind.
Legally, correct me if I am wrong, a fax counts as an original. We use faxes to transfer academic records. It saves a step since we don’t need to make a physical copy for our files. Some schools still want a signed copy with a raised seal imprint which must be mailed at a cost of only a couple of bucks, but then we are always out of stamps!
LOL at yourself, it’s true.
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