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Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine (or a telecopier), which processes the contents (text or images) as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a
bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...
, and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form of audio-frequency tones. The receiving fax machine interprets the tones and reconstructs the image, printing a paper copy. Early systems used direct conversions of image darkness to audio tone in a continuous or analog manner. Since the 1980s, most machines transmit an audio-encoded digital representation of the page, using
data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressi ...
to transmit areas that are all-white or all-black, more quickly. Initially a niche product, fax machines became ubiquitous in offices in the 1980s and 1990s. However, they have largely been rendered obsolete by
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
-based technologies such as
email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
and the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...
, but are still used in some medical administration and law enforcement settings.


History


Wire transmission

Scottish inventor Alexander Bain worked on chemical-mechanical fax-type devices and in 1846 Bain was able to reproduce graphic signs in laboratory experiments. He received British patent 9745 on May 27, 1843, for his "Electric Printing Telegraph". Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain's design and demonstrated a telefax machine. The Pantelegraph was invented by the Italian physicist
Giovanni Caselli Giovanni Caselli (8 June 1815 – 25 April 1891) was an Italian priest, inventor, and physicist. He studied electricity and magnetism as a child which led to his invention of the pantelegraph (also known as the universal telegraph or all-purpose ...
. He introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon in 1865, some 11 years before the invention of the
telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...
. In 1880, 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. An account of Henry Sutton's "telephane" was published in 1896. Around 1900, German physicist
Arthur Korn Arthur Korn (20 May 1870 – 21 December/22 December 1945) was a German physicist, mathematician and inventor. He was involved in the development of the fax machine, specifically the transmission of photographs or telephotography, known as the ...
invented the '' Bildtelegraph'', widespread in continental Europe especially following 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 The Hellschreiber, Feldhellschreiber or Typenbildfeldfernschreiber (also Hell-Schreiber named after its inventor Rudolf Hell) is a fax, facsimile-based teleprinter invented by Rudolf Hell. Compared to contemporary teleprinters that were based ...
'', invented in 1929 by German inventor
Rudolf Hell Rudolf Hell (19 December 1901 – 11 March 2002) was a German inventor and engineer. Career Hell was born in Eggmühl. From 1919 to 1923, he studied electrical engineering in Munich. He worked there from 1923 to 1929 as assistant of Prof. M ...
, a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission. The 1888 invention of the
telautograph The telautograph is an ancestor of the modern fax machine. It transmits electrical signals representing the position of a pen or tracer at the sending station to repeating mechanisms attached to a pen at the receiving station, thus reproducing at ...
by
Elisha Gray Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) was an American electrical engineering, electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric, Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his Invention of the telephone, dev ...
marked a further development in fax technology by making it possible for users to send signatures over long distances. This was used for verifying identification or ownership over long distances. 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 being suitable for newspaper reproduction. Previously, photographs had been sent over the radio using this process. The Western Union "Deskfax" fax machine, announced in 1948, was a compact machine that fit comfortably on a desktop, using special
spark printer Spark printing is an obsolete form of computer printing and before that fax and chart recorder printing which uses a special paper coated with a conductive layer over a contrasting backing, originally black carbon over white paper but later ...
paper.G. H. Ridings
A Facsimile transceiver for Pickup and Delivery of Telegrams


(January 1949); page 17-26.


Wireless transmission

As a designer for the
Radio Corporation of America RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...
(RCA), in 1924, Richard H. Ranger invented the wireless photoradiogram, or transoceanic radio facsimile, the forerunner of today's "fax" machines. A photograph of President
Calvin Coolidge Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A Republican Party (United States), Republican lawyer from Massachusetts, he previously ...
sent from New York to London on November 29, 1924, became the first photo picture reproduced by transoceanic radio facsimile. Commercial use of Ranger's product began two years later. Also in 1924, Herbert E. Ives of
AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...
transmitted and reconstructed the first color facsimile, a natural-color photograph of silent film star
Rudolph Valentino Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella (May 6, 1895 â€“ August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor who starred in several well-known sile ...
in period costume, using red, green and blue color separations.Sipley, Louis Walton (1951). ''A Half Century of Color''. Macmillan. Beginning in the late 1930s, the Finch Facsimile system was used to transmit a "radio newspaper" to private homes via commercial AM radio stations and ordinary radio receivers equipped with Finch's printer, which used thermal paper. Sensing a new and potentially golden opportunity, competitors soon entered the field, but the printer and special paper were expensive luxuries, AM radio transmission was very slow and vulnerable to static, and the newspaper was too small. After more than ten years of repeated attempts by Finch and others to establish such a service as a viable business, the public, apparently quite content with its cheaper and much more substantial home-delivered daily newspapers, and with conventional spoken radio bulletins to provide any "hot" news, still showed only a passing curiosity about the new medium.Schneider, John (2011)
"The Newspaper of the Air: Early Experiments with Radio Facsimile"
theradiohistorian.org. Retrieved 2017-05-15.
By the late 1940s, radiofax receivers were sufficiently miniaturized to be fitted beneath the dashboard of
Western Union The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Denver, Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the co ...
's "Telecar"
telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...
delivery vehicles. In the 1960s, the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...
transmitted the first photograph via satellite
facsimile A facsimile (from Latin ''fac simile'', "to make alike") is a copy or reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or other item of historical value that is as true to the original source as possible. It differs from other forms of r ...
to
Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...
from the Deal Test Site using the Courier satellite. Radio fax is still in limited use today for transmitting weather charts and information to ships at sea. The closely related technology of slow-scan television is still used by
amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency radio spectrum, spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emer ...
operators.


Telephone transmission

In 1964, Xerox Corporation introduced (and patented) what many consider to be the first commercialized version of the modern fax machine, under the name (LDX) or Long Distance Xerography. This model was superseded two years later with a unit that would set the standard for fax machines for years to come. Up until this point facsimile machines were very expensive and hard to operate. In 1966, Xerox released the Magnafax Telecopiers, a smaller, facsimile machine. This unit was far easier to operate and could be connected to any standard telephone line. This machine was capable of transmitting a letter-sized document in about six minutes. The first sub-minute, digital fax machine was developed by Dacom, which built on digital data compression technology originally developed at Lockheed for satellite communication.''The implementation of a personal computer-based digital facsimile information distribution system''
– Edward C. Chung,
Ohio University Ohio University (Ohio or OU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. The university was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the United States Department of the Treasury#Re ...
, November 1991, page 2
''Fax: The Principles and Practice of Facsimile Communication'', Daniel M. Costigan, Chilton Book Company, 1971, pages 112–114, 213, 239 Analog facsimile machines worked by optical scanning of a document or drawing spinning on a drum. The reflected light, varying in intensity according to the light and dark areas of the document, was focused on a
photocell Photodetectors, also called photosensors, are devices that detect light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation and convert it into an electrical signal. They are essential in a wide range of applications, from digital imaging and optical c ...
so that the current in a circuit varied with the amount of light. This current was used to control a tone generator (a modulator), the current determining the frequency of the tone produced. This audio tone was then transmitted using an acoustic coupler (a speaker, in this case) attached to the microphone of a common telephone handset. At the receiving end, a handset's speaker was attached to an acoustic coupler (a microphone), and a
demodulator Demodulation is the process of extracting the original information-bearing signal from a carrier wave. A demodulator is an electronic circuit (or computer program in a software-defined radio) that is used to recover the information content from ...
converted the varying tone into a variable current that controlled the mechanical movement of a pen or pencil to reproduce the image on a blank sheet of paper on an identical drum rotating at the same rate.


Digital transmission and height of popularity

By the late 1970s, many companies around the world (especially Japanese firms) had entered the fax market, and prices for long-distance faxing in 1978 were significantly lower than they had been in 1968, both at high and low speeds. Faxes had become useful to large newspapers and multinational corporations, and some digital methods were being developed. However, the rise of the market was fairly slow. Individual manufacturers had purposefully developed incompatible transmission methods in order to prevent their customers from buying from competitors. The CCITT (later
ITU-T The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating Standardization, standards fo ...
) Recommendation T.3, defining group 2 fax machines, was the first to offer interoperability in 1976, with a speed of three minutes per page. In 1980, the CCITT's Recommendation T.4 promised groundbreaking interoperability for digital fax machines, with transmission times of just 40 seconds per page. Accompanying this, a new wave of more compact, faster and efficient fax machines hit the market, leading to two decades of ubiquitous faxing in business contexts. Xerox continued to refine the fax machine for years after their ground-breaking first machine. In later years it would be combined with copier equipment to create the hybrid machines we have today that copy, scan and fax. Some of the lesser known capabilities of the Xerox fax technologies included their Ethernet enabled Fax Services on their 8000 workstations in the early 1980s. In 1985, Hank Magnuski, founder of GammaLink, produced the first computer fax board, called GammaFax. Such boards could provide voice telephony via Analog Expansion Bus.


In the 21st century

Although businesses usually maintain some kind of fax capability, the technology has faced increasing competition from
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
-based alternatives. In some countries, such as Germany, because
electronic signature An electronic signature, or e-signature, is data that is logically associated with other data and which is used by the signatory to sign the associated data. This type of signature has the same legal standing as a handwritten signature as long as ...
s on contracts are not yet recognized by law, while faxed contracts with copies of signatures are, fax machines enjoy continuing support in business. In
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
, faxes are still used extensively as of September 2020 for cultural and They are available for sending to both domestic and international recipients from over 81% of all convenience stores nationwide. Convenience-store fax machines commonly print the slightly re-sized content of the sent fax in the electronic confirmation-slip, in
A4 paper ISO 216 is an International Organization for Standardization, international standard for paper sizes, used around the world except in North America and parts of Latin America. The standard defines the "A", "B" and "C" series of paper sizes, wh ...
size. Use of fax machines for reporting cases during the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
has been criticised in Japan for introducing data errors and delays in reporting, slowing response efforts to contain the spread of infections and hindering the transition to
remote work Remote work (also called telecommuting, telework, work from or at home, WFH as an initialism, hybrid work, and other terms) is the practice of work (human activity), working at or from one's home or Third place, another space rather than from ...
. In many corporate environments, freestanding fax machines have been replaced by fax servers and other computerized systems capable of receiving and storing incoming faxes electronically, and then routing them to users on paper or via an
email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
(which may be secured). Such systems have the advantage of reducing costs by eliminating unnecessary printouts and reducing the number of inbound analog phone lines needed by an office. The once ubiquitous fax machine has also begun to disappear from the small office and home office environments. Remotely hosted fax-server services are widely available from VoIP and e-mail providers. Users can send and receive faxes using them with their existing e-mail accounts instead of dedicated hardware and fax lines. Personal computers have also long been able to handle incoming and outgoing faxes using analog modems or
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. ...
. These solutions are often ideally suited for users who only very occasionally need to use fax services. In July 2017 the United Kingdom's
National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...
was said to be the world's largest purchaser of fax machines because the digital revolution has largely bypassed it. In June 2018 the Labour Party said that the NHS had at least 11,620 fax machines in operation and in December the
Department of Health and Social Care The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England, along with a few elements of the s ...
said that no more fax machines could be bought from 2019 and that the existing ones must be replaced by secure email by March 31, 2020.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is an NHS hospital trust in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The Trust was formed in April 1998 after the merger of two previous smaller NHS trusts to form one citywide organisation. The former trusts were Unite ...
, generally viewed as digitally advanced in the NHS, was engaged in a process of removing its fax machines in early 2019. This involved quite a lot of e-fax solutions because of the need to communicate with pharmacies and nursing homes which may not have access to the NHS email system and may need something in their paper records. In 2018 two-thirds of Canadian doctors reported that they primarily used fax machines to communicate with other doctors. Faxes are still seen as safer and more secure and electronic systems are often unable to communicate with each other. Hospitals are the leading users for fax machines in the United States where some doctors prefer fax machines over emails, often due to concerns about accidentally violating
HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, ...
.


Capabilities

There are several indicators of fax capabilities: group, class, data transmission rate, and conformance with
ITU-T The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating Standardization, standards fo ...
(formerly
CCITT The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunicat ...
) recommendations. Since the 1968 Carterfone decision, most fax machines have been designed to connect to standard
PSTN The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the aggregate of the world's telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local telephony operators. It provides infrastructure and services for public telephony. The PSTN consists ...
lines and telephone numbers.


Group


Analog

Group 1 and 2 faxes are sent in the same manner as a frame of
analog television Analog television is the original television technology that uses analog signals to transmit video and audio. In an analog television broadcast, the brightness, colors and sound are represented by amplitude, instantaneous phase and frequency, ...
, with each scanned line transmitted as a continuous analog signal. Horizontal resolution depended upon the quality of the scanner, transmission line, and the printer. Analog fax machines are obsolete and no longer manufactured. ITU-T Recommendations T.2 and T.3 were withdrawn as obsolete in July 1996. * Group 1 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendation T.2. Group 1 faxes take six minutes to transmit a single page, with a vertical resolution of 96
scan line A scan line (also scanline) is one line, or row, in a raster scanning pattern, such as a line of video on a cathode-ray tube (CRT) display of a television set or computer monitor. On CRT screens the horizontal scan lines are visually discernib ...
s per inch. Group 1 fax machines are obsolete and no longer manufactured. * Group 2 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendations T.3 and T.30. Group 2 faxes take three minutes to transmit a single page, with a vertical resolution of 96 scan lines per inch. Group 2 fax machines are almost obsolete, and are no longer manufactured. Group 2 fax machines can interoperate with Group 3 fax machines.


Digital

A major breakthrough in the development of the modern facsimile system was the result of digital technology, where the analog signal from scanners was digitized and then compressed, resulting in the ability to transmit high rates of data across standard phone lines. The first digital fax machine was the Dacom Rapidfax first sold in late 1960s, which incorporated digital data compression technology developed by Lockheed for transmission of images from satellites. Group 3 and 4 faxes are digital formats and take advantage of digital compression methods to greatly reduce transmission times. * Group 3 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendations T.30 and T.4. Group 3 faxes take between 6 and 15 seconds to transmit a single page (not including the initial time for the fax machines to handshake and synchronize). They require sufficient
random access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written ...
to store two lines of scanned bits at a time. The horizontal and vertical resolutions are allowed by the T.4 standard to vary among a set of fixed resolutions: ** Horizontal: 100 scan lines per inch *** Vertical: 100 scan lines per inch ("Basic") ** Horizontal: 200 or 204 scan lines per inch *** Vertical: 100 or 98 scan lines per inch ("Standard") *** Vertical: 200 or 196 scan lines per inch ("Fine") *** Vertical: 400 or 391 (note not 392) scan lines per inch ("Superfine") ** Horizontal: 300 scan lines per inch *** Vertical: 300 scan lines per inch ** Horizontal: 400 or 408 scan lines per inch *** Vertical: 400 or 391 scan lines per inch ("Ultrafine") * Group 4 faxes are designed to operate over 64 kbit/s digital
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. ...
circuits. They conform to the ITU-T Recommendations ** T.563 (Terminal characteristics for Group 4 facsimile apparatus), ** T.503 (Document application profile for the interchange of Group 4 facsimile documents), ** T.521 (Communication application profile BT0 for document bulk transfer based on the session service), ** T.6 (Facsimile coding schemes and coding control functions for Group 4 facsimile apparatus) specifying resolutions, a superset of the resolutions from T.4, ** T.62 (Control procedures for teletex and Group 4 facsimile services), ** T.70 (Network-independent basic transport service for the telematic services), and ** T.411 to T.417 (concerned with aspects of the
Open Document Architecture The Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format (informally referred to as just ODA) is a free and open international standard document file format maintained by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats. ODA is det ...
). Fax Over IP ( FoIP) can transmit and receive pre-digitized documents at near-realtime speeds using ITU-T recommendation T.38 to send digitised images over an
IP network The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
using
JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...
compression. T.38 is designed to work with
VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...
services and often supported by analog telephone adapters used by legacy fax machines that need to connect through a VoIP service. Scanned documents are limited to the amount of time the user takes to load the document in a scanner and for the device to process a digital file. The resolution can vary from as little as 150 DPI to 9600 DPI or more. This type of faxing is not related to the e-mail–to–fax service that still uses fax modems at least one way.


Class

Computer modems are often designated by a particular fax class, which indicates how much processing is offloaded from the computer's CPU to the fax modem. * Class 1 (also known as Class 1.0) fax devices do fax data transfer, while the T.4/T.6 data compression and T.30 session management are performed by software on a controlling computer. This is described in ITU-T recommendation T.31. * What is commonly known as "Class 2" is an unofficial class of fax devices that perform T.30 session management themselves, but the T.4/T.6 data compression is performed by software on a controlling computer. Implementations of this "class" are based on draft versions of the standard that eventually significantly evolved to become Class 2.0. All implementations of "Class 2" are manufacturer-specific. * Class 2.0 is the official ITU-T version of Class 2 and is commonly known as Class 2.0 to differentiate it from many manufacturer-specific implementations of what is commonly known as "Class 2". It uses a different but standardized command set than the various manufacturer-specific implementations of "Class 2". The relevant ITU-T recommendation is T.32. * Class 2.1 is an improvement of Class 2.0 that implements faxing over V.34 (33.6 kbit/s), which boosts faxing speed from fax classes "2" and 2.0, which are limited to 14.4 kbit/s. The relevant ITU-T recommendation is T.32 Amendment 1. Class 2.1 fax devices are referred to as "super G3".


Data transmission rate

Several different telephone-line modulation techniques are used by fax machines. They are negotiated during the fax-
modem The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...
handshake A handshake is a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other's hands, and in most cases, it is accompanied by a brief up-and-down movement of the grasped hands. Customs surrounding hands ...
, and the fax devices will use the highest data rate that both fax devices support, usually a minimum of 14.4 kbit/s for Group 3 fax. : "Super Group 3" faxes use V.34bis modulation that allows a data rate of up to 33.6 kbit/s.


Compression

As well as specifying the resolution (and allowable physical size) of the image being faxed, the ITU-T T.4 recommendation specifies two compression methods for decreasing the amount of data that needs to be transmitted between the fax machines to transfer the image. The two methods defined in T.4 are: * Modified Huffman (MH). * Modified READ (MR) (''Relative Element Address Designate''), optional. An additional method is specified in T.6: * Modified Modified READ (MMR). Later, other compression techniques were added as options to ITU-T recommendation T.30, such as the more efficient
JBIG JBIG is an early lossless image compression standard from the Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group, standardized as ISO/ IEC standard 11544 and as ITU-T recommendation T.82 in March 1993. It is widely implemented in fax machines. Now that the new ...
(T.82, T.85) for bi-level content, and
JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...
(T.81), T.43, MRC (T.44), and T.45 for grayscale, palette, and colour content. Fax machines can negotiate at the start of the T.30 session to use the best technique implemented on both sides.


Modified Huffman

Modified Huffman (MH), specified in T.4 as the one-dimensional coding scheme, is a codebook-based run-length encoding scheme optimised to efficiently compress whitespace. As most faxes consist mostly of white space, this minimises the transmission time of most faxes. Each line scanned is compressed independently of its predecessor and successor.


Modified READ

Modified READ, specified as an optional two-dimensional coding scheme in T.4, encodes the first scanned line using MH. The next line is compared to the first, the differences determined, and then the differences are encoded and transmitted. This is effective, as most lines differ little from their predecessor. This is not continued to the end of the fax transmission, but only for a limited number of lines until the process is reset, and a new "first line" encoded with MH is produced. This limited number of lines is to prevent errors propagating throughout the whole fax, as the standard does not provide for error correction. This is an optional facility, and some fax machines do not use MR in order to minimise the amount of computation required by the machine. The limited number of lines is 2 for "Standard"-resolution faxes, and 4 for "Fine"-resolution faxes.


Modified Modified READ

The ITU-T T.6 recommendation adds a further compression type of Modified Modified READ (MMR), which simply allows a greater number of lines to be coded by MR than in T.4. This is because T.6 makes the assumption that the transmission is over a circuit with a low number of line errors, such as digital
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. ...
. In this case, the number of lines for which the differences are encoded is not limited.


JBIG

In 1999, ITU-T recommendation T.30 added
JBIG JBIG is an early lossless image compression standard from the Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group, standardized as ISO/ IEC standard 11544 and as ITU-T recommendation T.82 in March 1993. It is widely implemented in fax machines. Now that the new ...
(ITU-T T.82) as another
lossless Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statisti ...
bi-level compression algorithm, or more precisely a "fax profile" subset of JBIG (ITU-T T.85). JBIG-compressed pages result in 20% to 50% faster transmission than MMR-compressed pages, and up to 30 times faster transmission if the page includes
halftone Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone, continuous-tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing, thus generating a gradient-like effect.Campbell, Alastair. ''The Designer's Lexicon''. ...
images.
JBIG JBIG is an early lossless image compression standard from the Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group, standardized as ISO/ IEC standard 11544 and as ITU-T recommendation T.82 in March 1993. It is widely implemented in fax machines. Now that the new ...
performs adaptive compression, that is, both the encoder and decoder collect statistical information about the transmitted image from the pixels transmitted so far, in order to predict the probability for each next pixel being either black or white. For each new pixel, JBIG looks at ten nearby, previously transmitted pixels. It counts, how often in the past the next pixel has been black or white in the same neighborhood, and estimates from that the probability distribution of the next pixel. This is fed into an arithmetic coder, which adds only a small fraction of a bit to the output sequence if the more probable pixel is then encountered. The ITU-T T.85 "fax profile" constrains some optional features of the full JBIG standard, such that codecs do not have to keep data about more than the last three pixel rows of an image in memory at any time. This allows the streaming of "endless" images, where the height of the image may not be known until the last row is transmitted. ITU-T T.30 allows fax machines to negotiate one of two options of the T.85 "fax profile": * In "basic mode", the JBIG encoder must split the image into horizontal stripes of 128 lines (parameter L0 = 128) and restart the arithmetic encoder for each stripe. * In "option mode", there is no such constraint.


Matsushita Whiteline Skip

A proprietary compression scheme employed on Panasonic fax machines is Matsushita Whiteline Skip (MWS). It can be overlaid on the other compression schemes, but is operative only when two Panasonic machines are communicating with one another. This system detects the blank scanned areas between lines of text, and then compresses several blank scan lines into the data space of a single character. (JBIG implements a similar technique called "typical prediction", if header flag TPBON is set to 1.)


Typical characteristics

Group 3 fax machines transfer one or a few printed or handwritten pages per minute in black-and-white (bitonal) at a resolution of 204×98 (normal) or 204×196 (fine) dots per square inch. The transfer rate is 14.4 kbit/s or higher for modems and some fax machines, but fax machines support speeds beginning with 2400 bit/s and typically operate at 9600 bit/s. The transferred image formats are called
ITU-T The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating Standardization, standards fo ...
(formerly CCITT) fax group 3 or 4. Group 3 faxes have the
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
.g3 and the
MIME type In information and communications technology, a media type, content type or MIME type is a two-part identifier for file formats and content formats. Their purpose is comparable to filename extensions and uniform type identifiers, in that they ide ...
image/g3fax. The most basic fax mode transfers in black and white only. The original page is scanned in a resolution of 1728
pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...
s/line and 1145 lines/page (for A4). The resulting raw data is compressed using a modified Huffman code optimized for written text, achieving average compression factors of around 20. Typically a page needs 10 s for transmission, instead of about three minutes for the same uncompressed raw data of 1728×1145 bits at a speed of 9600 bit/s. The compression method uses a Huffman codebook for run lengths of black and white runs in a single scanned line, and it can also use the fact that two adjacent scanlines are usually quite similar, saving bandwidth by encoding only the differences. Fax classes denote the way fax programs interact with fax hardware. Available classes include Class 1, Class 2, Class 2.0 and 2.1, and Intel CAS. Many modems support at least class 1 and often either Class 2 or Class 2.0. Which is preferable to use depends on factors such as hardware, software, modem firmware, and expected use.


Printing process

Fax machines from the 1970s to the 1990s often used direct
thermal printer Thermal printing (or direct thermal printing) is a digital printing process which produces a printed image by passing paper with a thermochromic coating, commonly known as thermal paper, over a print head consisting of tiny electrically hea ...
s with rolls of thermal paper as their printing technology, but since the mid-1990s there has been a transition towards plain-paper faxes:
thermal transfer printer Thermal-transfer printing is a digital printing method in which material is applied to paper (or some other material) by melting a coating of ribbon so that it stays glued to the material on which the print is applied. It contrasts with direct th ...
s,
inkjet printer Inkjet printing is a type of printer (computing), computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper or plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range f ...
s and laser printers. One of the advantages of inkjet printing is that inkjets can affordably print in
color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...
; therefore, many of the inkjet-based fax machines claim to have color fax capability. There is a standard called ITU-T30e (formally ITU-T Recommendation T.30 Annex E ) for faxing in color; however, it is not widely supported, so many of the color fax machines can only fax in color to machines from the same manufacturer.


Stroke speed

Stroke speed in facsimile systems is the rate at which a fixed line perpendicular to the direction of scanning is crossed in one direction by a scanning or recording spot. Stroke speed is usually expressed as a number of strokes per minute. When the fax system scans in both directions, the stroke speed is twice this number. In most conventional 20th century mechanical systems, the stroke speed is equivalent to drum speed.


Fax paper

As a precaution, thermal fax paper is typically not accepted in archives or as documentary evidence in some courts of law unless photocopied. This is because the image-forming coating is eradicable and brittle, and it tends to detach from the medium after a long time in storage.


Fax tone

A CNG tone is an 1100 Hz tone transmitted by a fax machine when it calls another fax machine. Fax tones can cause complications when implementing fax over IP.


Internet fax

One popular alternative is to subscribe to an
Internet fax The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
service and send and receive faxes from a
personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
s using an existing email account. No software, fax server or fax machine is needed. Faxes are received as attached
TIFF Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is w ...
or
PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
files, or in proprietary formats that require the use of the service provider's software. Faxes can be sent or retrieved from anywhere at any time that a user can get Internet access. Some services offer secure faxing to comply with stringent
HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, ...
and
Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, () is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999–2001). It repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in ...
requirements to keep medical information and financial information private and secure. Utilizing a fax service provider does not require paper, a dedicated fax line, or consumable resources. Another alternative to a physical fax machine is to make use of computer
software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...
which sends and receives faxes utilizing fax servers and unified messaging. A virtual (email) fax can be printed out and then signed and scanned back into a computer to be emailed. Also the sender can attach a digital signature to the document file. With the surging popularity of mobile phones, virtual fax machines can now be downloaded as applications for Android and iOS. These applications make use of the phone's internal camera to scan fax documents for upload or they can import from various cloud services.


Related standards

* T.4 is the umbrella specification for fax. It specifies the standard image sizes, two forms of image-data compression (encoding), the image-data format, and references, T.30 and the various modem standards. * T.6 specifies a compression scheme that reduces the time required to transmit an image by roughly 50-percent. * T.30 specifies the procedures that a sending and receiving terminal use to set up a fax call, determine the image size, encoding, and transfer speed, the demarcation between pages, and the termination of the call. T.30 also references the various modem standards. * V.21, V.27ter, V.29, V.17, V.34: ITU modem standards used in facsimile. The first three were ratified prior to 1980, and were specified in the original T.4 and T.30 standards. V.34 was published for fax in 1994. * T.37 The ITU standard for sending a fax-image file via e-mail to the intended recipient of a fax. * T.38 The ITU standard for sending Fax over IP (FoIP). * G.711 pass through - this is where the T.30 fax call is carried in a VoIP call encoded as audio. This is sensitive to network
packet loss Packet loss occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is either caused by errors in data transmission, typically across wireless networks, or network congestion.Ku ...
,
jitter In electronics and telecommunications, jitter is the deviation from true periodicity of a presumably periodic signal, often in relation to a reference clock signal. In clock recovery applications it is called timing jitter. Jitter is a signifi ...
and clock synchronization. When using voice high-compression encoding techniques such as, but not limited to, G.729, some fax tonal signals may not be correctly transported across the packet network. * image/t38 MIME-type
SSL Fax
An emerging standard that allows a telephone based fax session to negotiate a fax transfer over the internet, but only if both sides support the standard. The standard is partially based on T.30 and is being developed by Hylafax+ developers.


See also

* 3D Fax * Black fax * Called subscriber identification (CSID) * Error correction mode (ECM) * Fax art * Fax demodulator * Fax modem * Fax server * Faxlore * Fultograph *
Image scanner An image scanner (often abbreviated to just scanner) is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object and converts it to a digital image. The most common type of scanner used in the home and the office is the flatbe ...
*
Internet fax The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
* Junk fax *
Radiofax Radiofacsimile, radiofax or HF fax is an analogue mode for transmitting grayscale images via high frequency (HF) radio waves. It was the predecessor to slow-scan television (SSTV). It was the primary method of sending photographs from remote sit ...
—image transmission over HF radio * Slow-scan television * T.38 Fax-over-IP *
Telautograph The telautograph is an ancestor of the modern fax machine. It transmits electrical signals representing the position of a pen or tracer at the sending station to repeating mechanisms attached to a pen at the receiving station, thus reproducing at ...
*
Telex Telex is a telecommunication Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communica ...
* Teletex * Transmitting Subscriber Identification (TSID) *
Wirephoto Wirephoto, telephotography or radiophoto is the sending of photographs by telegraph, telephone or radio. History Technologically and commercially, the wirephoto was the successor to Ernest A. Hummel's ''Telediagraph'' of 1895, which had tran ...


References


Further reading

* Coopersmith, Jonathan, ''Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) 308 pp. *
Transmitting Photographs by Telegraph
, ''
Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...
'' article, 12 May 1877, p. 297 * *
How to Send a Fax from Your iPhone Without an App
" FaxFlow. A practical overview of app-free digital faxing using iOS features. https://fax-flow.com/how-to/send-a-fax-from-your-iphone-without-an-app/


External links



��A '97 essay with technical details on compression and error codes, and call establishment and release.
ITU T.30 Recommendation
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