Some cool facts about the fax:

It was invented in Japan.

The west had Telex machines, which allowed us to send messages around the world almost instantly, but the Japanese hadn't invented a practical Kanji keyboard at this point, so had no way to "type" their character set, so they invented the fax (or faxsimile - facsimile) which allowed them to handwrite Kanji characters as well as do drawings to communicate.

It turned out it was a lot easier to use and more useful than a Telex, so it quickly caught on in the west and shortly overtook the Telex machine as the prime method of written communication.

Feel free to Google a telex.