Facsimile: Difference between revisions
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The successor in “almost-immediately obsolete contraptions” to the [[telex]] machine, nowadays the [[facsimile]] machine is mostly useful for affording bragging rights, both for those<ref>Experience and wisdom.</ref> who can remember having to use them and what they were for, and those who can’t<ref>Youth and beauty.</ref> | The successor in “almost-immediately obsolete contraptions” to the [[telex]] machine, nowadays the [[facsimile]] machine is mostly useful for affording bragging rights, both for those<ref>Experience and wisdom.</ref> who can remember having to use them and what they were for, and those who can’t<ref>Youth and beauty.</ref>. | ||
Granted, there was a digital component — the document was digitised and send across a PABX network as a series of ones and zeroes — only to be undigitised and rendered full useless at the other end, the usable digital information lost forever in a squeal and whirr of odd boinky noises and static. So close, but so far away. | The [[fax]] was desperate the last stand of the true analogue communication: a fax started out life as a piece of paper and ended up as one: a horrid, waxy, faded piece of parchment resemblent of the loo paper you used to get in nasty educational establishments. | ||
Granted, there was a digital component to a fax transmission — the document was digitised and send across a PABX network as a series of ones and zeroes — only to be undigitised and rendered full useless at the other end, the usable digital information lost forever in a squeal and whirr of odd boinky noises and static. So close, but so far away. | |||
A [[fax]] that ran out of paper was an important [[McGuffin]] in the ''denouement'' of John Grisham's [[espievie]] thriller, ''The Firm''. Not to be out-done, [[Hunter Barkley]]’s forthcoming novel is going to involve a malfunctioning [[telex]]. | A [[fax]] that ran out of paper was an important [[McGuffin]] in the ''denouement'' of John Grisham's [[espievie]] thriller, ''The Firm''. Not to be out-done, [[Hunter Barkley]]’s forthcoming novel is going to involve a malfunctioning [[telex]]. | ||
Revision as of 10:24, 1 May 2019
The successor in “almost-immediately obsolete contraptions” to the telex machine, nowadays the facsimile machine is mostly useful for affording bragging rights, both for those[1] who can remember having to use them and what they were for, and those who can’t[2].
The fax was desperate the last stand of the true analogue communication: a fax started out life as a piece of paper and ended up as one: a horrid, waxy, faded piece of parchment resemblent of the loo paper you used to get in nasty educational establishments.
Granted, there was a digital component to a fax transmission — the document was digitised and send across a PABX network as a series of ones and zeroes — only to be undigitised and rendered full useless at the other end, the usable digital information lost forever in a squeal and whirr of odd boinky noises and static. So close, but so far away.
A fax that ran out of paper was an important McGuffin in the denouement of John Grisham's espievie thriller, The Firm. Not to be out-done, Hunter Barkley’s forthcoming novel is going to involve a malfunctioning telex.