Fax Fast Facts

Did you know...

• Fax is older than the telephone. Alexander Bain patented the first fax-like device in 1843 — 33 years before Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patent in 1876.
• The first commercial fax service launched in 1865 — connecting Paris and Lyon via Giovanni Caselli's "pantelegraph," nearly two decades before Thomas Edison patented the practical light bulb.
• One of the earliest test faxes carried a celebrity's signature. In 1860, composer Gioacchino Rossini's signature was transmitted between Paris and Amiens as a test of the technology.
• In 1933, there were only about 100 fax machines in the entire world. Compare that to today.
• Fax machine sales peaked in the U.S. in 1997 — the same year the DVD launched in America.
• Japan's fax boom peaked a few years later, in 2000 — and by some accounts, it never really ended. Roughly 71.7% of Japanese public schools reportedly still use a fax machine on a daily basis.
• U.S. hospitals still send billions of fax pages every year. Estimates put healthcare fax volume at 9+ billion pages annually, with some studies suggesting up to 90% of clinical communication still runs through fax when EHR-linked exchanges are included.
• The IRS still accepts faxed documents for specific forms — in 2026, the taxman still takes a fax.
• By one industry estimate, around 17 billion faxes are still sent worldwide every year. Fax didn't die. It just stopped needing a machine.

Figures above are third-party industry estimates gathered from multiple sources — worth a spot-check against the most current data before publishing, since fax-usage stats vary by survey and shift year to year.

Sources

• Is Faxing Still a Thing in 2026? The Stats Will Surprise You — mfax.to
• The Greatly Exaggerated Death (And Rebirth) Of Faxing — Forbes
• Do People Still Use Fax Machines? Modern Faxing in 2026 — Notifyre