Common fax machines are designed to scan printed textual and graphic material and then transmit the information through the telephone network to similar machines, where facsimiles are reproduced close to the form of the original documents. Fax machines, because of their low cost and their reliability,…

…virtually replaced by the digital fax machine. In many offices, fax machines and e-mail began to replace other types of communication, including telegrams, TWX, Telex, and, in many cases, the postal service. In the face of changing technology, the Western Union Telegraph Company was reorganized as the Western Union Corporation…

computers, facsimile transmission between fax machines, or the downloading of audio-video files from a World Wide Web server to a home computer.

…of long runs is the fax machine. A fax machine works by scanning a document and mapping very small areas of the document into either a black pixel (picture element) or a white pixel. The document is divided into a number of lines (approximately 100 per inch), with 1,728 pixels…