Fax Machine (C/N)

A telecopier or facsimile machine (often shortened to just “fax”) is a machine which uses telephonic transmission to send scanned, printed materials (both text and images) to a printer or another output device. In the time before widely-accessible and widely-used wireless communication and the Internet, fax was the main method of transmitting pages of information across large distances very quickly. Although businesses today usually maintain some level of fax capabilities, it has faced increasing competition from Internet-based mediums. However, fax contains some advantages, particularly in the transmission of materials which are sensitive and for which avoiding interception is paramount, such as important financial and personal information. Recently, fax servers have come into use, storing what would once be faxed into a hard copy with ink and paper electronically and then re-routing it to paper or email.

A fax machine was used to send a copy of an x-ray from Costa Rica to the United States. The x-ray was of a Procompsognathus, but it was mistaken for a basilisk lizard.