---
title: "Which came first, the aeroplane or the fax machine?"
description: "the aeroplane vs the fax machine: the fax machine came first, by 60 years — 1843 against 1903. What happened in each case."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/aeroplane-vs-fax-machine/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the aeroplane or the fax machine?

**Which came first, the aeroplane or the fax machine?: the fax machine**

1843 — 60 years before the aeroplane

the fax machine came first, by 60 years. Alexander Bain patented an electric printing telegraph that sent images.

## Side by side

|  | the aeroplane | the fax machine |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1903 | 1843 |
| Date | 1903-12-17 | — |
| Category | invention | invention |
| What happened | The Wright Flyer made four powered flights at Kitty Hawk. | Alexander Bain patented an electric printing telegraph that sent images. |

## the aeroplane

The first flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 36 metres — less than the wingspan of a Boeing 747. The Wrights' real contribution was not the engine but three-axis control, which they worked out with a wind tunnel of their own design after finding the published lift tables wrong. Sixty-six years separate that flight from the Moon landing, well within a single lifetime.

## the fax machine

Bain's 1843 patent covered a device that scanned a raised metal image with a stylus and reproduced it at the far end of a wire — a fax machine in principle. Giovanni Caselli ran a commercial pantelegraph service between Paris and Lyon from 1865, sending signatures and handwriting eleven years before Bell patented the telephone. The fax is not merely older than the telephone; it is older than the American Civil War.

## Common questions

### Which came first, the aeroplane or the fax machine?

the fax machine, by 60 years — 1843 against 1903.

### When did the aeroplane start?

1903. The Wright Flyer made four powered flights at Kitty Hawk.

### When did the fax machine start?

1843. Alexander Bain patented an electric printing telegraph that sent images.

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## Sources

- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)