You don’t hear much talk about fax these days, but when it’s mentioned it makes me wax nostalgic. I’ve been working on an article about A4 for another publication and the “F” word came up the other day in a conversation with Lou Stricklin at Muratec. It was more of a passing reference, but for some bizarre reason I had a flashback afterwards to the first time I heard the “F” word in conversation. It was 1985 and I was working for a cable television magazine as a listings editor and my job each month was to contact each of the cable channels and ask them to overnight me their monthly listings. One day my contact for Bravo asked if we had a fax machine. A what? If we had one I didn’t know anything about it because no one was using that “F” word around the office let alone using the “F” machine if we even had one. I don’t think we did. I pleaded stupidity, saying something like, “I don’t think so” and the next day I received an overnight package with my listings.

Six months later I find myself in a new position as associate editor at an office trade magazine writing about fax machines, reading press releases and brochures about fax with clever titles like “Just the Fax, Ma’am” as well as sending and receiving faxes, and attending trade shows like NOMDA where I learned to feign excitement for the latest fax models from the likes of Mitsubishi, Telefax (I think that was their name, correct me if I’m wrong.), and Fujitsu among many others. Anyway, that conversation with Lou got me thinking about how far we’ve come since 1986.

New content this week includes: