The Facts of the Fax

When would you imagine the world’s first fax was sent? The 1970s? The 1960s? The 1950s at a pinch? The answer turns out to be 1907*. In that year, Arthur Korn transmitted a photograph from Munich to Berlin using a wire technology he had begun working on five years earlier. History omits to tell us whether Herr Korn was ever tempted to honour the office tradition of faxing images of his buttocks to unsuspecting acquaintances.

* A primitive version of the fax had been patented by Scottish inventor Alexander Bain as early as 1843, but Korn’s device allowed the first inter-city transmissions.