Your birth year
2006
Fax Machine
19871980s
Fax Machine is 19 years older than you
It's from 1987, before you were born.
- Type
- Document transmitter
- Standard
- Group 3 fax
- Debuted
- 1987
- Note
- Thermal paper that curls
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About
As of 2026, it's 39 years old.
Though the technology dates back to the 1800s, the fax machine became an office staple once the Group 3 standard made cheap units fast and common by the late 1980s, letting you beam a document across the world over a phone line.
It produced documents on slippery thermal paper that curled into scrolls and faded by next Tuesday, accompanied by a screeching handshake noise now permanently associated with dial-up dread. Somehow, against all logic, doctors and governments still use it.
The machine everyone declared obsolete in 1995 and is, somehow, still humming in a back office right now.
