Faxed : The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (321 pages)
- Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology Series .
- Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology Series .
Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 First Patent to First World War, 1843-1918 -- 2 First Markets, 1918-1939 -- 3 Facsimile, 1939-1965 -- 4 The Sleeping Giant Stirs, 1965-1980 -- 5 The Giant Awakes, 1980-1995 -- 6 The Fax and the Computer -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Essay on Sources -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z.
Written in accessible language that should appeal to engineers and policymakers as well as historians, Faxed explores themes of technology push and market pull, user-based innovation, and "blackboxing" (the packaging of complex skills and technologies into packages designed for novices) while revealing the inventions inspired by the fax, how the demand for fax machines eventually caught up with their availability, and why subsequent shifts in user preferences rendered them mostly passé.