Fax Machine

Hello there. My name is Fax Machine. I am a special box that can send pictures very, very far away. A long, long time ago, before I was born, sending a picture to a friend was super slow. It was like a little snail carrying a letter on its back, crawling all the way to your friend’s house. It took so many days. People wished they could send their drawings and notes much faster, like a zippy race car. They needed someone like me to help their pictures fly like magic. I was so excited to help everyone share their fun ideas and happy pictures quickly.

My very clever friend, Alexander Bain, thought of me. He had a wonderful, magical idea on a sunny day, on May 27th, 1843. He thought, what if we could send a picture through a long, skinny wire. It would be like a secret code made of little beeps. He imagined one machine that would carefully look at a drawing and turn it into little sounds. It would go beep-boop-beep. Then, another machine, far, far away, would listen to those beeps through the wire. It would hear the secret code and draw the exact same picture on a new piece of paper. It was a brand new way to share things with friends and family from all over the world.

With my help, pictures started zipping across the world. A drawing of a happy sun made in one town could be in another town in just a few minutes. I helped people share important papers and fun drawings almost instantly. I made a whirring and beeping sound when I worked, and everyone knew a special message was arriving. I was like the grandpa to the pictures you send on phones and computers today. I was one of the first to help pictures travel so fast. It makes me feel so proud that I helped friends share their art and their love, no matter how far away they were.