On this day in 1955, the first radio fax transmission was sent across the continent. The fax machine, once ubiquitous in offices, predates the invention of the telephone.

Like the telegraph, a fax machine sends its signals over a wire. Some of the earliest predecessors of the fax machines were devices that used pendulums, linked across the city by clocks, to send written messages in Paris in the 1890s. A 1903 version used a photoelectric scanning machine to send messages across Europe by wire.

Radio facsimile transmission also rose to prominence in the 1920s through 1950s, and is still used by weather stations and other observers for display and communication of ocean weather conditions. The first transmission across the continent pre-dated the popularization of fax achiness that used telephone lines, which eventually became the staple of long-distance image transmission until the digital revolution.