Fax, sometimes called telecopying or telefax, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material, normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine, which processes the contents as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap, 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 to more quickly transmit areas that are all-white or all-black.
The Intel 80186, also known as the iAPX 186, or just 186, is a microprocessor and microcontroller introduced in 1982. It was based on the Intel 8086 and, like it, had a 16-bit external data bus multiplexed with a 20-bit address bus.
The term black fax refers to a prank fax transmission, consisting of one or more pages entirely filled with a uniform black tone. The sender's intention is generally to use up as much of the recipient's fax ink, toner, or thermal paper as possible, thus costing the recipient money, as well as denying the recipient use of their own machine. This is made easier because fax transmission protocols compress the solid black image very well, so a very short fax call can produce many pages.
Junk faxes are a form of telemarketing where unsolicited advertisements are sent via fax transmission. Junk faxes are the faxed equivalent of spam or junk mail. Proponents of this advertising medium often use the terms broadcast fax or fax advertising to avoid the negative connotation of the term junk fax. Junk faxes are generally considered to be a nuisance since they waste toner, ink and paper in fax machines.
Radiofacsimile, radiofax or HF fax is an analogue mode for transmitting monochrome 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 sites from the 1930s to the early 1970s. It is still in limited use for transmitting weather charts and information to ships at sea.
GammaLink Inc. was an American computer hardware and software company founded in the 1980s in Sunnyvale, California, by Hank Magnuski and Michael Lutz. The company was the first to invent PC-to-fax communications technology, GammaFax.
Henry "Hank" Stanley Magnuski is an American engineer and was the co-founder and CEO of GammaLink, an early pioneer in PC-to-fax technology. He also founded Internet Video Services, a video service provider; MediaMart, an electronic commerce site; and NCast, a presentation technology company.
Xara is an international software company founded in 1981, with an HQ in Berlin and development office in Hemel Hempstead, UK. It has developed software for a variety of computer platforms, in chronological order: the Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Z88, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and more recently web browser-based services.
Delrina Corporation was a Canadian software company active from 1988 to 1995. The company was best known for WinFax, a software package which enabled computers equipped with fax modems to transmit copies of documents to standalone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers. It also sold PerForm and FormFlow, electronic form software. Delrina was acquired by the American software firm Symantec in 1995.
The Junk Fax Prevention Act (JFPA) of 2005, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 109–21 (text)(PDF), 119 Stat. 359 (2005), was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on July 9, 2005. The law amends the Communications Act of 1934, significantly altering some aspects of prior amendments made by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 as they relate to the issue of junk fax.
Fax art is art specifically designed to be sent or transmitted by a facsimile machine, where the "fax art" is the received "fax". It is also called telecommunications art or telematic art. According to art historians Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark, "Fax art was another means of mediating distances".
WinFax is a discontinued Microsoft Windows-based software product developed and published by Delrina designed to let computers equipped with fax-modems communicate directly to stand-alone fax machines, or other similarly equipped computers.
J2 Global, Inc. was an American technology holding company based in Los Angeles, California. The company provided Internet services through two divisions: Business Cloud Services and Digital Media.
Fax, short for facsimile, is a telecommunications technology used to transfer copies of documents over the telephone network.
Dacom, Inc. was founded in 1966 by two ex-Lockheed engineers, Daniel Hochman, President, and Don Weber, Vice President, building on their pioneering work on digital image compression invented for satellite communications. Their work resulted in the first commercial digital fax machine and later the first sub-minute facsimile transmission over a single standard phone line. In 1973 Dacom was recipient of the IR-100 Award for the most significant new product in Information Technology. The patents and technology developed by Dacom have become the foundation of the modern desktop fax machine.
A fax modem enables a computer to transmit and receive documents as faxes on a telephone line. A fax modem is like a data modem but is designed to transmit and receive documents to and from a fax machine or another fax modem. Some, but not all, fax modems do double duty as data modems. As with other modems, fax modems can be internal or external. Internal fax modems are often called fax boards.
A facsimile 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 reproduction by attempting to replicate the source as accurately as possible in scale, color, condition, and other material qualities. For books and manuscripts, this also entails a complete copy of all pages; hence, an incomplete copy is a "partial facsimile". Facsimiles are sometimes used by scholars to research a source that they do not have access to otherwise, and by museums and archives for media preservation and conservation. Many are sold commercially, often accompanied by a volume of commentary. They may be produced in limited editions, typically of 500–2,000 copies, and cost the equivalent of a few thousand United States dollars. The term "fax" is a shortened form of "facsimile" though most faxes are not reproductions of the quality expected in a true facsimile.
CCITT Group 4 compression, also referred to as G4 or Modified Modified READ (MMR), is a lossless method of image compression used in Group 4 fax machines defined in the ITU-T T.6 fax standard. It is only used for bitonal (black-and-white) images. Group 4 compression is based on the Group 3 two-dimensional compression scheme (G3-2D), also known as Modified READ, which is in turn based on the Group 3 one-dimensional compression scheme (G3), also known as Modified Huffman coding. Group 4 compression is available in many proprietary image file formats as well as standardized formats such as TIFF, CALS, CIT and the PDF document format.
Brooktrout Technology, Inc., later Brooktrout, Inc., was an American telecommunications company based in Boston, Massachusetts, and active from 1984 to 2005. The company was initially focused on the development of hardware and software to allow personal computers to act as fax machines, similar to GammaLink's GammaFax. The company later developed fax server hardware for local area networks before ultimately pursuing Voice over IP and videoconferencing products. In 2005, the company was acquired by EAS Group, who merged Brooktrout with another company of theirs to form Cantata Technology. Cantata was in turn acquired by Dialogic Group in 2007.
