The first fax machine was invented in 1843 — more than thirty years before the telephone — which means that for a 22-year window in the mid-1800s, a Japanese samurai could have theoretically sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln, since the samurai class was not formally abolished until 1867 and Lincoln died in 1865

On 27 May 1843, the Scottish clockmaker Alexander Bain was granted British Patent No. 9745 for what he called an electric printing telegraph: a device that used synchronised pendulums to scan a flat metal surface and reproduce its markings, line by line, at a receiving station over a telegraph wire. The patent describes the basic [...] The post The first fax machine was invented in 1843 — more than thirty years before the telephone — which means that for a 22-year window in the mid-1800s, a Japa