DesertFox
01-25-2005, 03:58 PM
The Economist
16 Sep 04
That most exasperating piece of equipment, the fax machine, is on its way out. But it will take a very long time to die
WHO hasn't felt the urge to smash up the office fax with a hammer at least once? The machines are slow, testy and prone to breaking—usually at the worst possible moment. They became indispensable items of office life in the 1980s and 1990s, when huge rolls of paper curled from out-trays as lengthy documents arrived. (More advanced machines cut the paper, but then the individual pages ended up on the floor in random order.) Such clunkiness was nonetheless a major advance from 150 years earlier, when Alexander Bain, a Scottish inventor, patented the first fax—a device that connected two styluses using a pendulum and a telegraph wire.
Thank goodness, then, that faxes are now going the way of the typewriter and carbon paper. E-mail is mostly responsible: it is easier, cheaper (especially for communicating abroad) and paperless. Whereas fax machines must be checked constantly to see whether something has come in, e-mail simply pops up on screen. Stand-alone fax machines have been especially hard-hit, though multi-function machines—which combine the fax machine with a copier, printer and scanner—have also struggled. Peter Davidson, a fax consultant, says that sales of fax machines worldwide fell from 15m in 2000 to 13m in 2001 and are still falling. He estimates that faxes now account for just 4% of companies' phone bills, down from 13% ten years ago. Americans especially are shedding them fast: by 2006, Mr Davidson predicts, their spending on fax machines will be less than half what it was in 2002.
The rest (http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3171500)
16 Sep 04
That most exasperating piece of equipment, the fax machine, is on its way out. But it will take a very long time to die
WHO hasn't felt the urge to smash up the office fax with a hammer at least once? The machines are slow, testy and prone to breaking—usually at the worst possible moment. They became indispensable items of office life in the 1980s and 1990s, when huge rolls of paper curled from out-trays as lengthy documents arrived. (More advanced machines cut the paper, but then the individual pages ended up on the floor in random order.) Such clunkiness was nonetheless a major advance from 150 years earlier, when Alexander Bain, a Scottish inventor, patented the first fax—a device that connected two styluses using a pendulum and a telegraph wire.
Thank goodness, then, that faxes are now going the way of the typewriter and carbon paper. E-mail is mostly responsible: it is easier, cheaper (especially for communicating abroad) and paperless. Whereas fax machines must be checked constantly to see whether something has come in, e-mail simply pops up on screen. Stand-alone fax machines have been especially hard-hit, though multi-function machines—which combine the fax machine with a copier, printer and scanner—have also struggled. Peter Davidson, a fax consultant, says that sales of fax machines worldwide fell from 15m in 2000 to 13m in 2001 and are still falling. He estimates that faxes now account for just 4% of companies' phone bills, down from 13% ten years ago. Americans especially are shedding them fast: by 2006, Mr Davidson predicts, their spending on fax machines will be less than half what it was in 2002.
The rest (http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3171500)