IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 8

the point that fax is not really one
technology that is independent of
locale or other factors, but that the
technology looks different through
different cultural lenses: as a manner of transmitting images or "original" signatures for users of the
Latinate alphabet, but as a more
precise manner of language transmission for logographic languages
such as Japanese. The regionality
of technology is well-understood
in science and technology studies

The fax machine was successful
because it was simple to use
and ubiquitous.
circles, but deserves repeating.
Coopersmith's coverage of this culturally situated linguistic dimension
connects to interesting questions
about languages and alphabets in
communication technologies, and
suggests that further investigation of other language groups and
their relationships to fax, and of
Japanese-language users' changing
relationships to analog and digital
text-entry devices, may be productive avenues for related research.
Among these large-scale narratives are a number of little moments
that make the history of facsimile
come alive, and contribute to the
richness of Faxed. AT&T's transmission of pictures to politicians via fax,
gifts sent as part of an advertising
campaign, is one such gem. Mentions of the early adoption of fax
for railroad ticketing, and the informal and activist uses of fax in the

1980s and 1990s are others. However, by virtue of its historical scope
and market focus, Faxed struggles
with avenues it does not have the
time or space to explore. Facsimile's
cultural resonances are mentioned,
but remain unexamined. The connection of the expansion of home faxing
with the expansion of the working
day beyond the office, and attendant changes in employee practices,
is commented on but not fleshed
out. Gendered dimensions of faxing
show up occasionally - particularly excellent is an anecdote about an American
corporation faxing information to its male board members but overnighting it to
its female board members,
assuming they did not have
fax machines - but do not
receive the deeper exploration they deserve, despite
several photo plates showing women
sitting on or operating fax machines
that would seem to invite such commentary. Fax art - and fax's artistic
resonance in the late twentieth and
early twenty-first century - is mentioned briefly, but calls for deeper
investigation in terms of its production and reception. The connection
of faxing to science fiction gets a
nod in Coopersmith's discussion
of Hugo Gernsback and the "Radio
Automated Facsimile and Reproduction" newspaper, but this avenue for
investigating fax's cultural resonance
is otherwise outside of the book's
focus. These social and cultural connections are of primary importance
to what faxing means to a culture,
as well as to the lived experience of
engaging with the fax machine.
Faxed, then, leaves the reader
with a variety of open questions,
for example: In what way are

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

dreams of faxed information fed
by or displayed through science fiction? What were the relationships
of women to facsimile machines,
both in their use and in advertising?
Several market-related and technical sections similarly deserve fuller
coverage. Although it provides a
detailed overview of the history of
facsimile technology, and an important contribution to the history of
media and communication technology, Faxed is by no means the final
word on faxing. However, its oversights seem to come with the territory of entering into a technological
discussion where prior synthesized
work is scarce, and Faxed accomplishes what it set out to do: to
provide a solid "first history" of the
facsimile machine based on technical and market details. It would be
a stronger and more complete work
if lengthened by even a few pages to
explain key statements and provide
further insight into other dimensions of faxing, but Faxed remains
a detailed and relatively accessible
discussion of the history of the technology of facsimile, and lays the
groundwork for deeper questions to
be asked about facsimile in particular contexts and time periods, from
gendered dimensions of faxing to
the status of facsimile in the popular imaginary.

Author Information
Erik L. Stayton is a graduate student
at M.I.T., where he currently
researches automation paradigms
and the media representations of
self-driving cars. He also studies the
material history of computing as a
member of the Trope Tank, a creative computing laboratory at M.I.T.
Email: estayton@mit.edu.

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december 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015