Jonathan Coopersmith

Facsimile's false starts

The development of the 150-year-old facsimile concept is recounted. The factors that have made it such a popular technology are examined. Its evolution from use in niche markets only to broader use, and the shift of initiative in developing the technology to Japan in the 1980s, are discussed. Standards setting, advantages of facsimile, and legal issues are addressed.<<ETX>>

Texas Politics and the Fax Revolution

This article analyzes the adoption and use of the fax machine to illustrate how information technology has altered the organizing process and conduct of electoral and legislative politics in Texas. The major groups studied are election campaigns, political parties, the legislature, and lobbyists. Faxing allows campaigns to do more, stay more informed, and disseminate information far more quickly and accurately than before. Consequently, the political process has accelerated significantly compared with five or ten years ago. Most obviously, the cycle for political news has shrunk from days to hours or minutes, forcing campaigns to be more organized and responsive. Faxing also enables organizations to generate a unified political theme statewide easily and quickly, creating the semblance, if not the reality, of a grassroots movement. Faxing gives centralized organizations the ability to appear decentralized and decentralized organizations the ability to act in a coordinated manner. Furthermore, faxing has increased the “technology gap” in politics. Republicans and conservative groups have proven more adept than Democrats at integrating fax machines into their operations, displaying greater strategic and tactical imagination. This divide extends into other information technologies and reflects larger cultural and historical differences between the parties.

Old Technologies Never Die, They Just Don't Get Updated

Abstract The paper examines the rise and fall of old technologies and their replacement by new ones, using the examples of telex and facsimile transmission replaced by email. The performance of old technologies may fall, due for example to increased costs, and this may encourage the development of new ones. Old technologies may respond to the challenge by improving services, reducing charges or their providers may move to alternative fields as for example the gas industry moved from lighting to heating with the increased availability of electric lighting. New technologies may develop when the transmission medium is improved, as with the increase in transmission rate of data on telephone lines.

Soviet electrification: the roads not taken

Drawing on material presented in greater detail in his book The Electrification of Russia, 1880-1926 (1992), the author discusses the history of electrification in Russia and details the formation of the State Committee for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO). GOELROs plan for using a network of regional stations controlled by the Soviet government is described. A discussion on why the Soviet state favored large-scale electrification instead of alternatives that promised more immediate economic and social returns is given. GOLEROs aim to use technology to transform a backward country into a modern, Communist state is also discussed.<<ETX>>

The Dog That Did Not Bark during the Night: The "Normalcy" of Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Science and Technology Studies

The collapse of the Sqviet Union let loose a flood of information about the history of the tsarist and Soviet periods. In the years since, scholars have produced much valuable work based on that new information, as the pages of Voprosi Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki (Questions in the history of science and technology) attest. Cooperation and communication among researchers are far easier and faster than they were, aided immensely by the internet and the worldwide web. In Russia, the community of historians of science and technology is healthy if not yet fully robust.1 It seems to be a good time to pause and take stock. What have we as historians of science and technology learned in the past fifteen or so years? A recent conference on Russian and Soviet science between 1860 and 1960 at the University of Georgia gathered academics from seven countries whose major problem was securing funding, not visas.2 It served to demon-

Pretty Good Technologies and Visible Disasters

On the movie screen and in television commercials, technologies are usu ally portrayed as visions of perfection, their parts seamlessly functioning without a hitch. In real life, however, most technologies are only pretty good or, if excellent, achieve that performance only at great price. Two Florida-based technologies, the space shuttle, symbol of Americas techno logical prowess, and the states voting system, now an icon of technological dysfunction, remind us of the limits of technologies, especially as they are influenced by the American political and economic system. Like the 1986 Challenger explosion in its time, the voting machine fiasco has become an object of intense speculation. How did things go wrong? It might help to consider the differences between space shuttles and voting systems?the first an excellent technology, the second a pretty good one. A pretty good technology works adequately most of the time without major problems or investments, whereas an excellent technology requires significant resources to function properly. (Each shuttle launch demands one to three million person-hours and between four hundred million and eleven hundred million dollars, depending on how you count.) When either technology fails, the results can sometimes be spectacular, truly visi ble disasters.

Fraud and Froth: Free-Riding the 3D Printing Wave

Turning an idea into a working technology is one step to commercialization. Behind every successful technology is successful funding to develop and produce it. If finding funding challenges inventors, investors have the challenge of determining where, how, and with whom to invest. Just because an emerging technology profits some that does not mean that any investor will profit. Standing between entrepreneurs and investors are fraudulent and frothy—speculative, likely-to-fail—firms, a sign of a growing market, reflecting the enthusiasm of promoters and the reality of technological and market uncertainty. Such firms can harm an entire industry by creating distrust and doubt, discouraging investment, and forcing legitimate firms to expand more resources to secure funding. Will fraud and froth adversely affect 3D printing? This chapter offers a historical perspective on people eager to invest in the emerging technologies of independent telephony in the 1890s–1910s, radio in the 1900s, oil in the 1910s–20s, and penny stocks. Although fraud and froth were rife in relation to all these technologies, demand proved so great that the losses comprised only a small part of the market. Similarly, 3D printing will suffer from fraud and froth, but the overall harm should be minimal.

STARS: Fax Machines [Scanning Our Past]

The basic concept of a facsimile, or fax, machine-a machine that electrically transmits an image-has not changed since 1843. The three main components remain the scanner transmitter, the transmitting medium, and the receiver recorder. Three broad, intertwined, technical trends help define the history of facsimile. First, the complexity of fax equipment vastly increased over time. Second, as machines became more sophisticated, they became “black boxes,”their technical aspects increasingly hidden from view. Third, and ironically enough, they became easier to use while more sophisticated in capability. Beyond the black, or gray, or white box of the machine, there were changes in facsimiles enabling and supporting technologies, the social environment, its competition, and the expectations and assumptions of its promoters and users.

A Florentine in in Paris: The Caselli pantelegraph and its successors, 1859–1871

The worlds first commercial facsimile service began between Paris and Lyon in 1865, reflecting a conjunction of good design, superb craftsmanship, need for a faster alternative to Morse telegraphy, and imperial patronage. Although technological and economic shortcomings stopped Abbe Casellis pantelegraphs in 1867, the French telegraph administration tested other fax systems to increase the speed and accuracy of telegram service. Facsimile machines proved faster than conventional Morse machines, but the automatic printing telegraph was even faster and less expensive. Other countries faced similar challenges with telegraphy, but patronage and craftsmanship distinguished facsimile in France.

Solar Power Satellites: Creating the Market for Beamed Energy Propulsion

Beamed energy advocates must investigate the potential of major markets like space based solar satellites and space‐based nuclear waste disposal. For BEP to succeed, its proponents must work with these possible users to generate interest and resources needed to develop BEP.