It was 1883. Paul Nibkov, who was studying at a British university, had a strong desire: the telegraph could transmit people's intentions, and the telephone could transmit people's voices. Could it be possible to invent a telegraph? What about a device capable of transmitting images and leaving such images far away?
One day, Nibkov saw two classmates playing a game. They each placed a piece of paper of the same size on the table, wrote a word on it, and then followed a certain order. Tell the other person which square is black and which square is white. After the other student processed all the small squares according to the instructions, the same words written by the other student appeared on the paper.
Nibkov, who had been thinking about designing a fax device, looked at it and blurted out: "This is a great idea!"
Nibkov continued: "Any image is composed of many black dots. If the image to be transmitted is decomposed into many small dots, these dots can be turned into electronic signals by scientific means and sent out. The receiving place only needs to convert the electronic signals again. By taking the idea and leaving it on the paper, wouldn’t it be possible to fax the image?”
After a period of development, Nibkov made a disc-type transmission device. And applied for a patent. Since then, Gray in the United States and Cowper in the United Kingdom have also achieved outstanding results in the development of fax devices.
Based on the development experience of many scientists, Radio Corporation of America developed the world's first practical fax machine in 1925.