Which was invented first — the fax machine or the telephone?

The fax machine actually predates the telephone by decades. Scottish inventor Alexander Bain patented an early device for transmitting images over wires in 1843, more than thirty years before Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876. Early fax-like machines were even used commercially to send handwriting and simple images over telegraph lines before voice transmission existed.

The idea that they arrived the same year understates just how much earlier image transmission technology got going, and it is easy to assume voice communication came first since it feels more fundamental, but the engineering for scanning and reproducing marks was solved first.

Fax technology stayed a niche, expensive tool for over a century before becoming a common office fixture in the late twentieth century, meaning an invention older than the telephone did not become a household staple until telephones were already ubiquitous.