When was the fax machine invented?

The idea behind the fax machine dates to 1843, more than 30 years before the telephone, when Scottish inventor Alexander Bain advanced its principle. He found that electric pulses sent down a telegraph wire could print marks on chemically treated paper. Machines that sent copies of handwriting and drawings followed by 1861. But the IEEE says Group 3, an international standard recommended in 1980 and nicknamed the "one-minute facsimile," enabled fax's worldwide commercial success.

Fax machine history at a glance

Who is credited with the fax machine: Alexander Bain

Alexander Bain was born in Scotland in 1810 and trained as an apprentice to a watchmaker in Glasgow. The Science Museum Group remembers him as a pioneer of electric clocks who "also invented an electro-chemical printing telegraph (fax machine)."

His key discovery was that a pulse of electricity passing through paper soaked in the right chemicals leaves a mark. A Bain chemical telegraph from 1850, now in the Science Museum Group collection, shows how it worked. A steel point wired to the telegraph line rested on a moving strip of damp, treated paper. In the museum's words, "each electric pulse left a mark" on the strip. That machine sent coded messages, similar to Morse code, that were punched into a paper strip at the sending end.

That chemical marking is what ties Bain to the fax machine. The IEEE is the engineering society that marks major milestones with plaques. Its record traces fax to "the radical principle advanced by Alexander Bain in 1843," and his British patent is usually dated to May 27, 1843. The Hagley Museum and Library says his discovery that electric pulses could print on chemically treated paper "was the ancestor" of the fax machine.

In 1848 Bain went to America "to seek his fortune," according to Hagley. His U.S. patent 5,957, "Improvement in copying surfaces by electricity," was issued on December 5 that year. His chemical telegraph patent was turned down at first and granted on appeal. Hagley holds one of the patent models he sent in, a combined transmitter, receiver and printer, and the Smithsonian holds another. Hagley describes unpacking a model with an engraved brass tag that read "Alexander Bain."

Samuel Morse, who held an 1840 telegraph patent, sued Bain's partner, Henry O'Reilly, and named Bain in the suit. The Supreme Court ruled for Morse in 1854, though Hagley notes "the court limited Morse's claims."

The first machines that sent pictures

Other inventors built machines that copied handwriting and drawings. Frederick Bakewell's copying telegraph is usually dated to 1848. One of these early machines, the pantelegraph that Giovanni Caselli built with Paul Gustave Froment, is in a Paris museum. The Musée des arts et métiers holds one dated 1861, and its record says the machine sent facsimiles, drawings and handwriting.

The museum's record adds that only two lines were ever installed. The fee was set at 20 centimes per square centimeter, a price the museum calls prohibitive, and the system was abandoned.

All of this happened before the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patent, number 174,465, was issued in the U.S. on March 7, 1876. The IEEE record notes that fax "preceded by 30 years or more the invention of the telephone."

Photos by wire, and the word "fax"

By 1935 news photos were being scanned and sent as electrical signals. According to the AP's own archive, the Associated Press sent its first Wirephoto in the early hours of January 1, 1935. It went out over a 10,000-mile network of leased wires. The first picture showed survivors of a plane crash who had just been rescued in the Adirondacks.

Put in fax terms, the AP machine scanned a picture, sent the scan as signals and rebuilt the picture at the other end. In the AP's description, the print sat on a rotating cylinder, and a photocell scanned it as it turned. The scan became electronic impulses, and the receiving machine turned them back into a negative for printing. That first transmission took under 15 minutes.

The short word arrived around the same time, and Merriam-Webster dates its first known use to 1937. Fax is a shortened form of facsimile, from the Latin fac simile, "make alike," so it isn't an acronym and doesn't stand for separate words. Facsimile means an exact copy, and in this sense, a system that sends copies of pages as signals over telephone lines.

The office fax machine, 1960s to 1980s

The Henry Ford museum holds a Xerox Magnafax Telecopier II made in Rochester, New York, around 1968, the year the IEEE says Group 1 was issued.

The fax standards came from the CCITT, the international standards group now called ITU-T, and the IEEE milestone record gives the dates. Group 1 was issued in 1968, and Group 2, nicknamed the "three minute facsimile," followed in 1976. Group 3, the "one-minute facsimile," was recommended in 1980.

Group 3 is the one that stuck. It sent the page as digital data with the repeated parts squeezed out, and the 1980 recommendation described it as "redundancy suppressive" digital facsimile. An IEEE plaque in Yokosuka, Japan, credits "strong Japanese leadership" for the 1980 standard. The record says Japanese delegates offered their patents on the coding method free of charge if it became the standard. The plaque says the standard "enabled the worldwide commercial success of facsimile."

The Group 3 rules live on in ITU-T Recommendation T.4, whose current edition, from July 2003, the ITU still lists as in force. A Xerox Telecopier 485 from 1980, the year Group 3 was recommended, is in the Science Museum Group collection. In 1984 a newer coding method, T.6, was adopted, and it became the code for Group 4 fax.

From phone lines to the internet

In 1996 Group 1 and Group 2 were dropped as standards. In June 1998 the ITU issued T.38, "Procedures for real-time Group 3 facsimile communication over IP networks," and its current edition dates from November 2015. It sets out how a Group 3 fax can travel over IP networks, the kind the internet runs on, not only over phone lines.

Today you can send a fax from a website or a phone app without owning a fax machine.

Where U.S. agencies still list fax

Fax is still part of some official processes in the U.S., as two current government pages show.

The first is a January 2024 fact sheet from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on its Interoperability and Prior Authorization final rule. It says that beginning in 2026, the payers the rule covers must give a specific reason when they deny a prior authorization request. Those decisions, the fact sheet says, "may be communicated via portal, fax, email, mail, or phone."

The payers it covers, which CMS calls impacted payers, are Medicare Advantage organizations, Medicaid and CHIP programs and managed care plans. Qualified Health Plan issuers on the federal exchanges are covered too. The notice rule doesn't apply to decisions about drugs. The same rule requires these payers to set up a Prior Authorization API, an electronic connection for these requests, beginning January 1, 2027.

The second is from the IRS, which lets people submit Forms 2848 and 8821 online. Its page, last reviewed June 28, 2026, also says "Fax or mail the forms," but it doesn't accept electronic signatures on forms sent that way. For a case you need to discuss right away, one option the IRS gives is to fax the form with a "wet" ink signature. The fax goes to the IRS employee handling the matter. If you fax one of these forms, our IRS fax cover sheet page explains what to put on the cover sheet.

If you need to send one yourself, start with our guide on how to fax without a fax machine, which compares the options. We also explain what a fax number is and how to find one, and where you can fax something near you.

You can send a fax today without a fax machine. You can upload PDFs or photos here, and you don't need an account. As of November 2026, a fax of up to 40 pages costs $2.49 on this website, to any fax number in the US or Canada. For paper pages, the FaxFair iPhone app scans them with the camera.

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