On Friday 24 January 2003 13:56, i18n wrote:

>I thought fax technology in an early form was used by news

gathering organizations to relay photos since about the 1920's.

It was; I hope I mentioned that to some degree; "AP Wirephoto" was
familiar decades ago. However, as you point out, cost was a factor.
Wirephoto machines were *very* costly, from the
consumer/small-business standpoint. They probably also used special
relatively-wideband communications channels, as well.

> I think the reason it wasn't generally available was because in

the US there were restrictions on placing non-ATT devices of any
sort on a line and ATT only made POT (Plain Old Telephones).

Very good point. Not sure, but I think Telefax(?) might have been
available from Ma Bell, but not cheaply. It also was far from a
desirable technology. If you think thermal paper is bad, Teledeltos
was worse.

> [...] What made them arise in the 70s (I guess) was that it became

cheap enough to manufacture them and sell them at the right price
point.

Quite true; I suspect that the development push was in part a desire
to use written Japanese.

I realize we're 'way off-topic; I'll probably be lurking a lot more
from now on, in a manner of speaking, having used up several
months' "quota" of off-topic "space". (^_^) Lurking, also, because
my lifetime's items for discussion have mostly been already stated.

Thanks for your thoughts!

--
-- Nicholas Bodley |@| Waltham, Mass.
-- Sent using KMail with Mandrake Linux 9.0 --
owner of a Bell System modem
who first discovered katakana in 1954 ("WHAT is THAT?!" -- silent
thoughts...: [ko] [ro] [n] [bi] [ya] ("Columbia" {records} on a
billboard, probably downtown Yokosuka.)) Btw, I have found it
*extremely* difficult to write decent-looking hiragana.