Fax Machines

A facsimile (fax) machine is a machine that copies the image of a document, sends it to another location, and reproduces it exactly. Early facsimile machines were developed in the nineteenth century, but in its modern form, compact and cheap enough for household use, the fax machine is a product of the late twentieth century.

Nineteenth century facsimile machines, such as those developed by Alexander Bain and Frederick Bakewell in England and Giovanni Caselli in Italy, used mechanical methods of copying and reproduction. The contents of the document were traced by a pen and the movement of the pen was recreated at the other end. This technique was slow and laborious. In 1873,Willoughby Smith showed that pulses of light converted to pulses of electric current and sent by wire could be reconverted by a selenium photoelectric cell. This technique was used to send newspaper photos. A breakthrough occurred in Germany in 1902, when Arthur Korn invented a method for transmitting photographs by electric wire. This process, telephotography, was used to send the first intercity fax, between Munich and Berlin in 1907. The first machine to employ document scanning, as in the modern fax machine, was the Belinograph, invented by the Frenchman such machines expensive to use. In the 1970s, Japanese companies began to develop faster, smaller, cheaper, and more efficient fax machines. Japan was also the country with the highest level of ownership. By 1985, the number of fax machines in use in the United States had grown to 550,000, whereas Japan had 850,000 and Europe only 120,000. From the mid-1980s, the availability of combined telephone and fax machines made the fax machine more appealing for home use. By 1989, there were 4 million fax machines in the United States.

Fax technology has continued to improve. Early fax machines required expensive thermal paper impregnated with carbon. In such machines, the thermal paper, held on a drum, is heated when current flows through the stylus, releasing the carbon to the paper surface to recreate the transmitted document. To improve print quality and enable the use of ordinary office paper, manufacturers developed “plain paper” fax machines that use either ink film or ink-jets. The Japanese company Canon launched the first plain paper fax machine in 1987. Ink film still relies on thermal technology but the ink is transferred from a thermal film to plain paper, whereas ink-jets spray ink through tiny perforations in the printer head directly onto plain paper. Early fax/phones had to be manually set to act as phone or fax, which could be frustrating. This was solved by the development of automatic fax/phones that could detect whether the incoming message originated from a telephone or fax machine and respond accordingly. Today, the top range fax machines are fully compatible with personal computers, so that they can fulfill a variety of scanning and printing functions.

APS and Digital Photography

Both of the latest developments in photography draw on electronic technology. It was almost inevitable that digital photography would emerge in the wake of digital computers and digital sound recording. The key component of a digital camera is a powerful sensor capable of translating the light components of an image into a sufficient number of pixels for it to be reproducible as a continuous image. In 1986, Eastman Kodak developed the first megapixel sensor, with a capacity broadly equivalent to the content of a 13 by 18 cm (5 by 7 inch) photograph. Digital cameras soon followed, with Japanese companies predictably leading the way in making the technology affordable. All digital cameras have the common feature of being filmless, but there are several methods of storing images, including computer floppy disks, removable memory cards, and built-in memory. Eastman Kodak’s PhotoCD pioneered digital technology whereby negatives on film can be scanned and stored digitally on compact disc. The PhotoCD system was introduced in 1990. For the private consumer, the main disadvantage of digital photography is that the quality of output from the typical home printer is far below that of conventional photographic printing.

APS, the Advanced Photo System, was developed by a consortium of five companies—Eastman Kodak and four Japanese companies, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, and Minolta. The APS project began in 1992, and APS cameras and film went on the market in 1996. APS cameras take cartridges of 24 mm film, which incorporates magnetic strips for storing information from sensors about date and time, exposure length, and size settings. Date or message imprinting and normal/panoramic size settings were features already incorporated in some 35 mm cameras; the additional advantages of APS are that the film is thinner and hence the cartridges are slimmer, permitting corresponding slimmer and lighter cameras, and the developed negatives are rewound into the cartridge after printing, so there is less danger of damage through mishandling. A reference set of contact prints is provided to facilitate reordering of prints.

Hair Clippers

The hair clipper was the first electrical haircare appliance designed for use by men rather than women. Leo J. Wahl invented the first practical electric hair clipper in 1919 and set up the Wahl Clipper Corporation in Sterling, Illinois. The hair clipper basically consists of an electrically driven blade with a comb guide, and the design has changed little since its introduction. Today’s hair clippers are supplied with a range of combs for different trimming grades and are also available as cordless models with rechargeable batteries.

See also
Hair dryers; Hair Stylers

S. W. Farber, Inc.

The S.W. Farber company was established in 1900 when S.W. Farber, a tinsmith, set up a shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The initial products were copper and brass bowls and vases. In 1910, the company introduced Farberware, the line of kitchenware for which it is best known, with chrome and silver-plated table accessories. It produced kitchenware, pots, and pans in the 1920s and moved into the appliance field in 1930 when it developed the first Farberware coffee percolator. Farber improved this with the Coffee Robot coffeemaker of 1937 that could keep coffee warm long after it had brewed. The Broiler Robot, which followed in 1938, was advertised as “the first broiler that could cook at the dinner table.”

Farberware stainless steel and aluminum pans were introduced in 1949 after the company had moved away from wartime demands and invested in stainless steel production. It produced the first stainless steel electric frying pan in 1954. Sold to the multinational Hanson Industries in 1987, it is now a part of Salton Inc. and continues to produce coffeemakers, juicers, and waffle makers.

See also
Coffeemakers