Editing Fax (section)

=== Wireless transmission ===
{{Main|Radiofax}}
[[File:Krant per fax - Faxed newspaper (4193509648).jpg | upright=1.2|thumb | right | Children read a wirelessly transmitted newspaper in 1938.]] 
As a designer for the [[Radio Corporation of America]] (RCA), in 1924, [[Richard H. Ranger]] invented the wireless photoradiogram, or transoceanic [[radiofax|radio facsimile]], the forerunner of today's "fax" machines. A photograph of President [[Calvin Coolidge]] sent from New York to London on November 29, 1924, became the first photo picture reproduced by transoceanic radio facsimile. Commercial use of Ranger's product began two years later. Also in 1924, [[Herbert E. Ives]] of [[AT&T Corporation|AT&T]] transmitted and reconstructed the first color facsimile, a natural-color photograph of silent film star [[Rudolph Valentino]] in period costume, using red, green and blue color separations.<ref name="Sipley">Sipley, Louis Walton (1951). ''A Half Century of Color''. Macmillan.</ref>

Beginning in the late 1930s, the Finch Facsimile system was used to transmit a "radio newspaper" to private homes via commercial AM radio stations and ordinary radio receivers equipped with Finch's printer, which used thermal paper. Sensing a new and potentially golden opportunity, competitors soon entered the field, but the printer and special paper were expensive luxuries, AM radio transmission was very slow and vulnerable to static, and the newspaper was too small. After more than ten years of repeated attempts by Finch and others to establish such a service as a viable business, the public, apparently quite content with its cheaper and much more substantial home-delivered daily newspapers, and with conventional spoken radio bulletins to provide any "hot" news, still showed only a passing curiosity about the new medium.<ref name="Schneider">Schneider, John (2011). [http://www.theradiohistorian.org/Radiofax/newspaper_of_the_air1.htm "The Newspaper of the Air: Early Experiments with Radio Facsimile"]. theradiohistorian.org. Retrieved 2017-05-15.</ref>

By the late 1940s, radiofax receivers were sufficiently miniaturized to be fitted beneath the dashboard of [[Western Union]]'s "Telecar" [[telegram]] delivery vehicles.<ref name=Ridings1949 />

In the 1960s, the [[United States Army]] transmitted the first photograph via satellite [[facsimile]] to [[Puerto Rico]] from the [[Deal Test Site]] using the [[Courier 1B|Courier satellite]].

Radio fax is still in limited use today for transmitting weather charts and information to ships at sea. The closely related technology of [[slow-scan television]] is still used by [[amateur radio]] operators.