Jewish Invention Myths: The Fax Machine
Our next jewish invention myth is that jews invented the fax machine.
What is the claim?
‘MNews’ asserts that:
‘Arthur Korn – Fax machine
The photoelectric image scanning technology invented by physicist and mathematician Arthur Korn laid the foundation for fax machines.’ (1)
This is supported by ‘Boulder Jewish News’. (2)
What is the reality, however?
The fax system was first created by the Scottish inventor Alexander Baine on 27th May 1843 in the form of ‘electric printing telegraph’ (3) and the first commercial fax service between Paris and Lyon was created by Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli in 1865. (4)
This was then superseded by English physicist Shelford Bidwell’s ‘scanning phototelegraph’ in 1880 – which allowed photographic images to be faxed for the first time, (5) while in 1888 early modern document scanning was invented by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray in the form of ‘Teleautograph’. (6)
Arthur Korn’s ‘Bildtelegraph’ of 1900 was a further development of both Bidwell’s system and Henry Sutton’s improved version the ‘Telephane’ system of 1896.
So, no: Arthur Korn didn’t invent the fax system rather Alexander Baine, Giovanni Caselli and Shelford Bidwell did!
Scratch another jewish invention myth.
References
(1) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions
(2) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/
(3) https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/when-was-fax-invented
(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20200817223601/http://www.itisgalileiroma.it/shed/shed0/shed0/caselli.htm
(5) Shelford Bidwell, 1880, ‘The Photophone’, Nature, Vol. 23, No. 557, pp. 58-59; Shelford Bidwell, 1881, ‘Tele-Photography’, Nature, Vol. 23, No. 589, pp. 344-346
(6) https://patents.google.com/patent/US386814A/en