FAX°

noun and verb (Science and Technology) noun: Facsimile telegraphy (a system allowing documents to be scanned, digitized, and transmitted to a remote destination using the telephone network); a copy of a document transmitted in this way; a machine capable of performing facsimile telegraphy (known more fully as a fax machine). transitive verb: To transmit (a document) by fax. Etymology: An abbreviated and respelt form of facsimile; sometimes popularly associated with the respelt form of facts in the next entry. History and Usage: Experiments in different methods of facsimile transmission began in the late nineteenth century; the first successful transmission of a document took place in 1925. Fax technology was first written about using this name in the forties, describing a method of transmitting newspaper text by radio rather than by telephone; this was the result of research and development work carried out by the American electrical engineer and inventor John V. L. Hogan during the late twenties and thirties. In 1944, after contributing to military use of facsimile during the Second World War, he was instrumental in forming Broadcasters' Faximile Analysis, a research project linking broadcasters and newspaper publishers in the US, but their plans to provide a facsimile news service in individual homes failed because of licensing difficulties. Legal restrictions on the use of telephone equipment which did not belong to the telephone company also stood in the way of widespread application of telephone fax, and the word fax remained in the technical jargon of telegraphy until these restrictions were lifted and the machines became widely affordable for business use in the early eighties. By the middle of the eighties, it had already developed the three distinct uses mentioned above as well as being widely used as a verb, and it was commonplace for company notepaper to carry a firm's fax number (the telephone number to be dialled to enable the firm to receive a faxed document) as well as standard telephone and telex numbers. Derivatives include faxable (capable of being faxed), faxee (a person to whom a fax is sent), faxer (a sender of faxes), faxham (a person who uses the fax as a radio ham uses short-wave radio to contact unknown enthusiasts), and faxing (the sending of faxes). As the technology improved, fax became faster and cheaper. Daily Telegraph 21 Nov. 1986, p. 16 In a five-storey office building, there may be a fax on each floor. Observer Magazine 19 June 1988, p. vi NFUC sent out several thousand faxes urging the faxees to refax the fax to the fax machines in the governor's office. Washington Post 23 May 1989, section C, p. 5 He had not faxed me specifically, he continued, since he did not know me from Adam--the faxham simply tapped arbitrarily into the void...hoping sometime, somewhere, to encounter responsive life. The Times 20 Mar. 1990, p. 14