History of the Facsimile Machine, 1843-1995

从推翻政府到订餐，再到关注足球比赛，传真机在没有电脑的情况下，在全球范围内提供了方便、即时的书面交流。虽然大多数人认为传真是20世纪80年代电子和计算机革命的自然产物，但实际上，传真技术已经存在了150年。美国、英国和法国的大公司都有机会推广传真技术。然而，日本的社会需求，其“字母表”不容易适应键盘，导致了它在过去二十年的商业成功。库珀史密斯博士正在研究为什么人们花了这么长时间才开发和利用一台彻底改变了我们交流方式的机器。传真机似乎是一个独立的设备，但它是错综复杂地嵌入到电话和计算机网络、标准、商业和社会习俗以及法律和经济结构的系统中。研究传真机为理解这种通信系统的构造和演变提供了一个途径。库珀史密斯博士正在使用比较国际的方法来捕捉传真技术的演变。他的主要研究主题是创新和扩散、失败和利基市场的发展、大型组织在塑造技术演变和个人选择中的作用，以及沟通的变化。最近传真机的广泛使用是技术、经济和社会因素综合作用的结果。为了理解这种趋同和先前努力的失败，对美国、英国和日本的比较将阐明不同的社会和经济制度是如何影响传真技术的辩论和发展的。通过分析传真如何改变了人们的沟通和工作方式，本研究将加深我们对“信息革命”中电信发展形态的理解。几十年来，人们对传真机的用途和重要性的预测都超过了现实，但当它在20世纪80年代中期被广泛接受时，大量的应用和进一步的创新让每个人都感到惊讶，包括“未来电子办公室”的支持者。库珀史密斯博士的研究不是一部狭隘的机器历史，而是探索技术、经济、政治和社会价值观如何塑造了传真机的演变，以及传真技术如何影响了它所嵌入的社会。本研究将有助于创新文献的发展和信息革命的进一步研究。* * *

9320001 Coopersmith From overthrowing governments to ordering food and following football, the fax machine provides easy, instant written communication worldwide without the alienation of the computer. Although most people assume that faxing is a spontaneous spinoff of the electronic and computer revolutions of the 1980's, in reality, fax technology has existed for 150 years. Major companies in the US, Britain, and France had the opportunity to promote fax technology. Yet the social needs in Japan, which has an "alphabet" that is not easily accommodated to the keyboard, led to its commercial success in the past twenty years. Dr. Coopersmith is examining why it took so long for people to develop and utilize a machine that has revolutionized the way we communicate. The fax machine appears to be a free-standing device, but it is intricately embedded in a system of telephone and computer networks, standards, business and social mores, and legal and economic structures. Studying the fax machine provides a gateway into understanding the construction and evolution of this system of communications. Dr. Coopersmith is using a comparative international approach to capture the evolution of fax technology. His main themes are innovation and diffusion, failure and the development of niche markets, the role of large organizations in shaping technical evolution and personal choice, and changes in communication. The recent widespread use of fax machines resulted from a convergence of technical, economic and social factors. To understand this convergence and the failure of prior efforts, comparisons among the United States, Great Britain and Japan will illuminate how different social and economic systems shaped the debates and development of fax technology. By analyzing how faxing has changed the way people communicate and work, this research will deepen our understanding of the evolving shape of telecommunications on the "information revolution." For decades predi ctions about the uses and importance of fax machines outpaced the reality, but when widespread acceptance came in the mid-1980's, the plethora of applications and further innovation surprised everyone, including proponents of the "electronic office of the future." Dr. Coopersmith's study is not a narrow history of a machine, but an exploration of how technologies, economics, politics, and societal values shaped the evolution of the fax machine and how fax technology influenced societies in which it is embedded. This research will contribute to the growing literature on innovation and further the study of the information revolution. ***