4 ms·

I remember Chris Serle learning about email from Ian McNaughton in 1982, I just couldn’t understand how fax was a thing for the next couple of decades.

gerdesj 6y ago
"... fax was a thing for the next couple of decades." Inertia. I accidentally dropped my company's fax machine in the skip when we moved a few years back. I also forgot to move the phone line or even order one for it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
madaxe_again 6y ago
Fax is still a thing. Not long ago did some work for a publisher, who take orders from their stockists via forms submitted either via ftp as EDIs, or fax as either EDI or a hand-filled form for transcription to EDI - the majority still fax in handwritten forms. I also had to send a fax of documentation to a government a few weeks ago - their rationale was that fax was secure, and email wasn’t - the irony of course being that I used some random web to fax service, which is likely much less secure than either email or fax!
- flyinghamster 6y ago
  Fax is absolutely still out there. Before he retired, someone I know who ran a machine shop got drawings by fax right up to the very end. Put your drawing in the fax machine, key in the number (or speed dial), hit Send. No mucking about with apps or websites. Of course, drawings are a rather special case, and it's not like we're using fax for general business communications now. Back when a few people still did, I actually put together a HylaFax setup that allowed the office to print directly to fax. I think it got used for non-testing purposes maybe twice.
Mauricebranagh 6y ago
It was expensive you where charged by the email and data on top of that - I used to work on billing for Telecom Gold (Dialcom) and Prestel.
jameshart 6y ago
One of my weirdest development experiences was in what must have been about 2005, on a call with the team at another company who were to provide us with a web service API (I think given the era it was probably an ad hoc XMLRPC implementation of some sort). I asked them to send me over a sample of the request xml. They faxed it.

gerdesj 6y ago

"... fax was a thing for the next couple of decades." Inertia. I accidentally dropped my company's fax machine in the skip when we moved a few years back. I also forgot to move the phone line or even order one for it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

madaxe_again 6y ago

Fax is still a thing. Not long ago did some work for a publisher, who take orders from their stockists via forms submitted either via ftp as EDIs, or fax as either EDI or a hand-filled form for transcription to EDI - the majority still fax in handwritten forms. I also had to send a fax of documentation to a government a few weeks ago - their rationale was that fax was secure, and email wasn’t - the irony of course being that I used some random web to fax service, which is likely much less secure than either email or fax!

flyinghamster 6y ago
Fax is absolutely still out there. Before he retired, someone I know who ran a machine shop got drawings by fax right up to the very end. Put your drawing in the fax machine, key in the number (or speed dial), hit Send. No mucking about with apps or websites. Of course, drawings are a rather special case, and it's not like we're using fax for general business communications now. Back when a few people still did, I actually put together a HylaFax setup that allowed the office to print directly to fax. I think it got used for non-testing purposes maybe twice.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago

It was expensive you where charged by the email and data on top of that - I used to work on billing for Telecom Gold (Dialcom) and Prestel.

jameshart 6y ago

One of my weirdest development experiences was in what must have been about 2005, on a call with the team at another company who were to provide us with a web service API (I think given the era it was probably an ad hoc XMLRPC implementation of some sort). I asked them to send me over a sample of the request xml. They faxed it.