If you were asked how you send documents nowadays, how do you think you would respond? I think the most common response would be attaching it to an email. It’s relatively painless, costs no money, and it is practically instantaneous, only requiring a few clicks. Well, my friend, back when I was your age, sending email was incredibly time-consuming, and the maximum file size for sending emails was very small. Instead, we used fax machines.
Fax machines are essentially two telephone numbers connected to scanners. If you wanted to send a document, such as a form you filled out or a letter, you had to send a fax. Faxes work by scanning the document you wanted to send, and converting it into a picture. Then, you had to know the fax number (which was often the same as the telephone number) of the person you wanted to send it to, and you would send the picture of whatever document to the recipient. While that seems relatively painful, in my opinion, faxes were horribly inconvenient and time-consuming. For one, each page you wanted to send had to be individually scanned before the fax could be sent, which took quite a while since scanning technology was not nearly as fast or efficient as it is nowadays. You also had to create a cover page stating the amount of pages you were sending so the recipient knew when they had received the entire document. I think the most annoying part about faxes was receiving them. For the fax machine we had at home, the faxes came in through our home telephone number, and would cause the phone would ring until the fax actually went through to the machine. Once we had answered the phone, we only had a couple seconds to realize that it was a fax that was being sent and hang up before the fax got cancelled. If by chance we did not hang up the phone in time, the fax wouldn’t go through, which was inconvenient in and of itself, but what was worse is that the sender would have no idea that the fax had not gone through, and to top it off, we (the receiver) would not know who sent it unless we had previously planned the fax.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that you kids with your email have it so easily. You’re alerted to a message’s failure to send, and you are able to access the message from pretty much anywhere, whether it is on your smartphone, tablet, or computer. I’m personally really happy that email has replaced fax machines as the go-to method of sending documents electronically.
DTC 375: Jesse Pearson 
Good post, I like just how stark in contrast your post is to mine. Taking a more practical approach to the prompt rather than a minor factual based approach. It is true that tuition is 17 times now what they were 60 years ago, and I hope they’re not 17 times what we pay now in 60 years. How terrible would that be? Pretty bad I think. Also, my work uses a fax machine and I always pick up the phone, get that annoying fax tone in my ear, and immediately hang it up. They’re terribly annoying and inconvenient!
Quin
The facts you presented really bring home your points. College tuition has really increased to a point where it is getting unethical. In 60 years I can only hope they don’t increase another 17 fold or my kid and grand kids sure as hell aren’t attending college. I agree nobody uses fax machines anymore. I only know how to operate one because my Grandma and Grandpa used to have a phone/fax/scanner combo and I loved drawing pictures and scanning them.