Handwriting not on the wall for fax machines

Paris

IT may have slipped from its golden age into its golden years, but two decades into the Internet era the fax machine is still, perhaps surprisingly, holding its place in many offices.

While it has been reduced to a small player in the rapidly growing world of digital communications, "millions of people still use fax machines daily worldwide and probably will continue to do so in the near future", said Jonathan Coopersmith, an associate professor at Texas A&M University, who has written a book on the history of the once ubiquitous office machine.