Just The Fax

There seem to be two industries that are still waiting to adjust to the slightly new method of transferring information — the medical field and the financial sector.

Anywhere else, it seems, you can simply scan and email off whatever you need to send. For those two, though? For some reason, they still rely heavily on a technology that at one time was cutting edge and yet today has sort of moved past its prime.

That would be the fax machine.

A few months ago, when TigerBlog switched primary care doctors, he had to get his medical records set from one practice to another. He was told that the authorization to do so had to come by fax.

Fax? "Okay," TB said, "I'll just go to the Smithsonian and use the one they have on display there."

A fax machine? Seriously?

A week ago, TB once again found himself in a situation where he had to send information — confidential information at that — and yet the only way it could be done was through fax. Was there still a fax machine in Jadwin Gym?

As it turns out, there was. In Room 1. TB asked Associate Director of Athletics Kim Meszaros if there was a fax machine in her office, and the answer was "sort of." As it turns out, you can fax from the printer/copy machine, though hardly anyone ever does.

So off to Room 1 TB went. And once there, he found himself surrounded by a bunch of 30-somethings, and even 20-somethings, and guess what? None of them had ever sent a fax in their lives. 

For TB, sending the fax last week turned out to be something of a nostalgic thrill, especially when he heard the phone line dial out and connect to the other machine. Ah, those poor young people who have never experienced the pure joy of hearing those rings, followed by a long, melodious, wonderful tone on the other end. And pity anyone who has never uttered those five wonderful words "face up or face down."

Of course, the fax used to be the cutting edge of information transfer. What? You don't have to mail all this stuff? You can just stick it in the machine and off it goes? 

There was a time when faxing was the bedrock of sports information. Back and forth it went, with releases sent out and rosters and stats received. It could be a nightmare, especially if you got a busy signal. 

Do young people know what busy signals are?

As TB has written before, there used to be something called "Fax-on-Demand." This was a service where a release or a pregame story or something could be faxed to a central number, and then anyone who wanted that information could then call into that fax number and have it faxed to them, for a small fee.

The procedure was to finish whatever it was you were writing, print it out and then fax it to the number. It wasn't until you got the confirmation note that spit out at the end that you could exhale.

When a game was over, you'd fax out the results and release to whatever your distribution list was. At one point, there was an Ivy League athletic communications rule that said that you could only ask the home school to fax out to a maximum of four locations after a game. TB was in the meeting where all that was decided, and it really was a knock-down, drag-out between the "it has to be no more than four" and "well, five seems reasonable" gangs.

TigerBlog tried to mediate between the two, until he lost his mind over the idiocy of it all and said something along the lines that he would send as many faxes as he was asked to, assuming they all had a reason to be sent. For you young ones out there, you could create a group fax list, but for the visitors you usually just sent them one at a time, and you had to get the confirmation on each individually. It was very stressful.

Fortunately, those days are gone forever. 

Well, sort of forever.