---
title: "Which came first, the fax machine or photography?"
description: "the fax machine vs photography: photography came first, by 17 years — 1826 against 1843. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/fax-machine-vs-photograph/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the fax machine or photography?

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

1826 — 17 years before the fax machine

photography came first, by 17 years. Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature.

## Side by side

|  | the fax machine | photography |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1843 | 1826 |
| Category | invention | invention |
| What happened | Alexander Bain patented an electric printing telegraph that sent images. | Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature. |

## 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.

## photography

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras, made around 1826 or 1827 on a pewter plate coated in bitumen, required an exposure of at least eight hours. Daguerre's process of 1839 cut that to minutes and made photography practical. Photography therefore predates the telephone by half a century and the fax machine by seventeen years.

## Common questions

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

photography, by 17 years — 1826 against 1843.

### When did the fax machine start?

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

### When did photography start?

1826. Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature.

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## Sources

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