Most people don't believe me when I say the Fax machine was invented in 1843... And no that's not a typo
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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Well yeah, that's true, but also, have to bear in mind it wasn't exactly the same.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_telegraph
Lead me to read more about it. Some people used to read the news from the radio, lol.
Children read a wirelessly transmitted newspaper in 1938.
This makes me feel old
Obligatory “There was a period of time where Abraham Lincoln could have sent a fax to a Samurai” joke.
Is it even a joke if it's true?
Things can be both, such as with my life
This is what the internet calls jokes now haha I don't like it either.
I'm all for language evolving but I feel like people are reaching into a bucket of words without looking and just chucking them at a sentence before vomiting it out.
Vibe English, like Vibe Coding.
That sounds wrong, but I don't know enough about samurai's fax technology to dispute it.
It's mostly a "well, technically" kind of thing. First prototypes were around since the 1840s but the first commercial telefax service was introduced in February 1865, a little under two months before Lincoln was killed. Samurai were around until the late 1860s or early 1870s. I can't quite find when the first telefax machine was operated in Japan but 1928 shows up on some lists.
So yeah, Lincoln could have sent a fax to a samurai if they both had traveled to France just a few weeks before Lincoln's death.
This should be a TIL post in of itself haha
This is your chance to make one. After all, today you learned that.
And there's no record that they did. Talk about missing a great opportunity
The fax received would have been a great historical artifact.
Wonder how they'd preserve the heat paper.
Kind of makes sense, since it was just an extension of the existing telegraph technology.
Yes.