Fax machines had a moment in the sun, but they are actually much older than you might expect. Before the consumer-grade fax machines arrived, there was a thriving market for “wire photos” used by, for example, news organizations and the weather service. In the United States, the WEFax from Western Electric was fairly common and shows up on the surplus market. [Thomas] has an English unit, a Muirhead K-570B, that is very clearly not a consumer-oriented machine. His unit dates back to 1983, but it reminds us of many older designs. Check out his teardown in the video below.
The phone line connection on this device is a pair of banana jacks! There are even jacks for an external meter. Inside, the device is about what you’d expect for a 1983 build. PCBs with bare tinned conductors and lots of through-hole parts.
While not a universally well-known name, Muirhead was a pioneering Scottish inventor. He recorded the first human electrocardiogram and collaborated with Sir Oliver Lodge on wireless telegraph patents. While another Scotsman, Alexander Bain, worked out how to chemically print on paper and Arthur Korn built the first machines that optically scanned the page, it was Murihead, in 1947, that worked out using a drum as the scanner, just as this machine does.
Think this is among the oldest fax machines ever? No way. Remember, though, in 1983, the consumer fax machines were just about to appear. Ask FedEx, we are sure they remember.
How cool! The first money i made out of high school has as a stringer for the local paper. I took a photo if a soldier standing guard on Memorial Day and the editor liked it so much he sent it out in the wire. I got $10 off that photo.
I’d love to see a breakdown of an actual 1930s Crosley “Reado” wire service newspaper (as below). It’s a classic example of a good idea at the wrong time by Powel Crosley*, but spun off into various radio wire service operations that continue.
*”Eventually we believe that every home will be equipped to receive sound, facsimile, and television.”
https://www.crosleyautoclub.com/Reado/Reado.html
( If the form factor of the printer seems familiar it’s purely coincidental…)
When I was in elementary school in the early 70’s, one of our field trips was to a National Weather Service location. The only thing I remember from that trip is the fax machine. They opened the top so we could see the drum with shiny metal spiral that completed exactly one circuit around the drum. As explained at the time, the drum would spin once for each line of the image, and power would be applied at intervals to cause a spark to jump to the treated paper, leaving a pale brown mark. After a single revolution, the paper would advance one line.
The resolution would be considered laughable today, of course, but somehow my mental model of a fax machine has always been this early version of the technology.
I don’t remember any discussion of the sending side of the process.
We had wefax in the US Navy on the USS JFK in the weather office. I was responsible for maintaining it. I was the designated ET for keeping it and the GOES and NOAA receivers running…
They rebranded these as “DeskFax” — nice teardown here: http://madrona.ca/e/deskfax/index.html
I wonder if you can still get the wacky “acorn” light bulb it used? I’m sure the phototube is unobtainum.
Well that sent me down the rabbit hole. The bulb is a GE1502. I found one for $50, but that was about it. Said they had one in stock, even.
Back in the 70s, I had a job at my university’s darkroom in Boston. The pope was in town and the New York Times had arranged ahead of time to have their photographers basically take over the darkroom to develop their film and make prints, which were then “wired” to New York for publication in the newspaper. I remember being amazed that they “fixed” their film for just a few seconds, put it in the enlarger still wet, exposed and developed 8 x 10 prints and fixed them for only a few seconds before putting them on a machine similar to the one in the article (except theirs had a phone handset coupler). Because the prints had been in the fixer bath for just a few seconds, they would be fading as they were being transmitted. As soon as the newspaper received the photos, the photographers had no use for the negatives or prints and they were discarded. They made their deadline, which was the most important thing.
The photographers also had some awesome equipment, including super telephoto lenses, motor drives, and gyroscopic stabilizers.
I would imagine such a device nowadays would not work well over a call that has any segments that use VoIP, as most VoIP↔PSTN Gateways and ATAs will mute any DTMF tones that they hear, and send them as out-of-band signalling. Some gateways also seem to try and filter out things that could potentially be misinterpreted as valid DTMF digits down the line. When I was experimenting wish sending Radiofax over the telephone, I found that when I made a call with VoIP segments, that the DTMF conversion and false positive filtering could greatly screw up the image that was received on the other end, but calls that had no VoIP segments would be fine.
Oh they have protocols for that. Sometimes they even work! T38 coverts analog faxes via an ATA (analog terminal adapter) to digital packets that are not as closely bound to latency as the original faxing protocol. I still support medical clinics that are convince faxing is still relevant in 2025.
” I still support medical clinics that are convince faxing is still relevant in 2025.”
It’s a fact of life between hospitals. I see it everyday.
I’ve often thought this was due to the universality and accesibility of the output, assuming the messages are printed automacally like the faxes of yesteryear.
Nobody has to log in to anything. The right person doesn’t need at work at that time. The user interface for the final product is inherent and ubiquitous, literally built in to the user, not a piece of relatively scarce man made tech. Lots of downside, but faxes do seem to still be effective in specifc ways.
For some hospitals the purpose is to air-gap patient data from the Internet.
Having a data-entry job for someone who might not be so employable otherwise might be seen as a side benefit.
Used 4 wire plenty for Command and Control of Transmitters up until recently. Cleaner comms with 4 wire. No talkback on the same 2 wire pair. Also made diagnostics a crap-ton easier than the 2 wire modems we used for other purposes.
It could be fun to compare this with a teardown of the Xerox Telecopier. Synchronized transmit and receive drums, printing essentially by banging a stilus against carbon paper. Transmission was normally just white/black, but resolution was good enough that you could wrap the original in a plastic halftone screen before scanning and get halftone reproduction on the far end.
I don’t think anyone ever reported creating a PC interface to a Telecopier for printing or scanning; the beast just wasn’t fast enough or high enough resolution or sufficiently widely available to attract much hacker attention.