Back to the Fax Machine

Buy the download! Make some nerds happy!
shop.festivalofthespokennerd....
That's it really.
I'm not sure what else to say.
Uh, here's the whole Spoken Nerd shop I guess.
festivalofthespokennerd.com/shop/
I've also uploaded my scan of the Daily Express if you'd like to take a closer look at the moon fax. Fun story: I've been to the room at Jodrell Bank where this fax was printed.
www.dropbox.com/s/9ukk66aj8pg...
I do still get any faxes sent to that number, by the way. SO DON'T GET ANY IDEAS.
VHS pause effect from here: www.shadertoy.com/view/4lB3Dc
CORRECTIONS
None yet. Let me know if you spot anything!
Thanks to my Patreon supporters, of which here is a random five:
David Bell
Malcolm Rowe
Richard Fourie
ROUX
Laura Dale
Support my channel on Patreon:
/ standupmaths
Music by Howard Carter
Filming and editing of Just For Graphs by Trunkman Productions
Design by Simon Wright
MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
Website: standupmaths.com/
Maths book: makeanddo4D.com/
Nerdy maths toys: mathsgear.co.uk/

[@dirm12]

"A genuine mobile fax machine! No don't start now, it's not plugged in yet."

[@LeviJohansen]

should have called it cellular

[@jitsekuilman2492]

Only Matt Parker would edit the video so that the viewers would know the trick wasn't edited.

[@Notarget1337]

Jitse Kuilman zero fax given.

[@BrendanGuildea]

A Parker edit, if you like.

[@billyanderson2858]

Pop@@BrendanGuildea My aààaaaàqqqààaàààaaààààæ

[@musical_daredevil]

"Download a fax app" is definitely not a phrase I ever anticipated hearing

[@Domihork]

Matt Parker almost tricked me into believing that nobody owns fax machines... Then in 2019 I moved to Germany and oh boy, what a surprise.

[@tomorrow6]

Oh yes and mechanics and other shops were still using them to send and receive info into 2022

[@JohnVanderbeck]

Even in the US many companies have/use them. Faxing a hotel at Disney is still the best way to get a room request :D

[@flymypg]

One of the first things I did after adding a Hayes 300 baud modem to my Apple ][+ back in 1981 (after dialing in to some local BBSs) was to compute fax images, and use the fax as a printer that would be much quieter than my noisy dot-matrix printer. But the lack of memory to hold an entire page at 200x100 DPI (approximately "Standard" fax resolution, ~200 kB/page) meant I couldn't simply plot lines and draw characters into a large bitmap. I had to get a bit more clever. My first thought was to have a representation of the plot and/or text I could then rasterize to a file on a floppy disk, but this rapidly became way too complex to implement quickly. I then noticed that the vast majority of fax dots were left white (not printed). When meant that an RLE (Run-Length Encoding) would be extremely effective. In RLE, you have a dot value followed by how many times it is used sequentially. I wrote a program (initially in UCSD Pascal) that would plot dots within a binary RLE representation of a fax page. Let's say an empty fax page is represented by "0[200,000]", which is simply 200,000 white (unset) dots. Now, let's say I want to plot a horizontal line that's 2 dots thick across the middle of the page. The resulting RLE expression would be: "0[99,300],1[400],0[99,300]". Even as text (binary is far more compact), that's a small representation of an entire fax page! The other advantage of RLE is it is ridiculously fast and easy to decode on the fly, far faster than reading uncompressed raw data from floppy, and fast enough to keep up with the fax mode of the modem. I added functions for drawing simple fonts, lines and conic sections (using Bresenham's algorithms) and went for it. Creating the representation was easy, but I had lots of trouble sending it as a fax. Documentation back then was fairly sparse, and I had to reverse-engineer the details of the Hayes fax commands. I soon learned that UCSD Pascal was poorly suited to real-time programming, and rewrote the fax send program in 6502 assembler. When I did this, I also wrote a program that would take my RLE fax files and send them to my dot-matrix printer (which was much cheaper to test with since fax thermal paper was expensive at the time). Of course, I soon learned I wasn't the first to attempt this, nor was I the best. By the time I finished my code, even Hayes had released a program and library that covered 80% of what I had done. All I did was port my code to draw conic sections and arcs. Later I added various spline functions. Then flood-fill of closed objects. Then I added dithering for filled areas. Then I switched to an MS-DOS PC and never touched the code again.

[@CraftQueenJr]

BobC this just sounds amazing.

[@richardpike8748]

Congratulations in the most nerdy way possible! This is something I would do if I had the time and the resources lol

[@skyjoe55]

I have never been so interested in something from 2 years ago that i dont understand

[@theemeralddragonyt9315]

Is there any way you can explain this a bit more simply

[@mow184]

The most amazing thing about this story, aside of the fact that you did all this, is that you remember doing all this. I don’t remember what I ate for lunch.

[@fignewton7968]

I have never laughed harder at a live performance regarding the life, death, and revival of the fax machine

[@41-Haiku]

I was amused, but didn't laugh at all. So... same!

[@MrHack4never]

It's just like vinyl records!

[@rishabhdhiman9422]

That seems to be quite a niche performance.

[@coryman125]

Is that a machine capable of both phoning and faxing? Please, please tell me you called it the faxophone

[@NoNameAtAll2]

phone fex

[@JasperJanssen]

Also known as “most fax machines”.

[@laurawagoner9136]

Jasper Janssen or a cell phones?! still funny tho .. reminds me of homer and his pronunciation of saxophone

[@Fexghadi]

@@NoNameAtAll2 Huh?

[@muhilan8540]

@@JasperJanssen it's called telefax

[@MisterAppleEsq]

If I pay enough, can you fax me the VHS?

[@HelPfeffer]

XD

[@johnchessant3012]

Post-fax world!! And alternative fax!!! Matt Parker, you are a genius. :)

[@steffensauer2894]

John Chessant could you explain that one to me?

[@johnchessant3012]

Matt was making a political joke. In the US election last year, Trump (who famously said "You're fired!" a lot on his TV show) made so many false statements during the campaign that some people said that Americans are living in a "post-facts world". Then, earlier this year, Trump's adviser Kellyanne Conway said the phrase "alternative facts" on live TV during an interview (prompting the response "alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods"). Matt was riffing on how similar "fax" and "facts" sound.

[@MagicznaPanda]

Only two things are certain in life - death and faxes

[@RandomActsOfReality]

The NHS is believed to be the biggest purchaser of fax machines in the world - I don't know how true this is because I can't bothered to fact check it. But what is true is that the NHS runs on fax machines, especially when it comes to communication between GPs and other parts of the NHS. I'm not terribly upset by this because it has a fair few advantages. 1) Because not many people have faxes it's really difficult to send confidential information to a random person by dialling the wrong number. 2) Actual signatures are transmitted, so if I want a GP to prescribe something for my patient, the fax, that I can put in the patient's notes means that it is a legal prescription. 3) You can't CC everyone in the NHS and bring the whole thing to a halt. 4) You get a nice receipt which means you are certain that your message has be received (whether it gets acted on is another thing...) So for something from the 1800's it's not a bad bit of kit. And a lot easier to use than the official NHS email system where it's all web-based.

[@dom1310df]

Brian Kellett +1 for point number 3

[@dolliemoggie]

A fax still cannot be accepted as a legal prescription, as it lacks the signature of the prescriber in indelible ink, especially for controlled drugs, but most pharmacies can dispense your medicine against a fax, usually on bank holidays when it's a genuine case of emergency.

[@tangerinetech5300]

If only I knew what business field you were talking about

[@lpalmer90]

@@tangerinetech5300 British healthcare system

[@jamiewilding6979]

I work in US at hospital. We send medical records by fax because of security. I use a fax machine 20-30 times a day.

[@Firecul]

9:23 you can't fool me, that VHS still has it's tab on. Aren't you worried about someone taping over it with some under par maths comedy show?

[@nicolacornolti7796]

It's just a mock-up, not a real picture

[@arthbanka7960]

Parker fax machine

[@Ben-nk3cx]

Arth Banka stored in a Parker box

[@ag8454]

Ben Garcia The three-dimensional analog to the Parker Square, i.e. the Parker Cube

[@tiberiu_nicolae]

The Parker square worked too, even though it wasn't "perfect"

[@TrumpCardMAGA]

I couldn't let the likes sit at 299

[@murk1e]

Which makes no sense, as it worked fine

[@arrowed_sparrow1506]

I love every second. It's easy to understand, well thought-out, and looks amazing. It's clearly one of the best Venn diagrams ever made. Oh, and the show was ok too.

[@Bodyknock]

I wonder how many times per day he gets a fax of a Parker Square?😄

[@acerockman3520]

I was in the audience for this, I tried sending a fax to it but it ran out of paper

[@acerockman3520]

danfrommn I don't know, it was filmed months ago

[@ZXGuesser]

hah, I rewound and watched it again to find where the ties went on just before the pause bit appeared.

[@andrewseburn]

Me too

[@trigonzobob]

Rewound - ha ha - did you watch on VHS? :)

[@ZXGuesser]

Yes, I have all KZbin videos dubbed onto tape by my butler so that I can watch them on my CRT television. Doesn't everyone do that?

[@KuraIthys]

ZXGuesser That sounds like a lot of work. I have s-video out on my computer. Works just fine. ;p

[@philb.1658]

I live in Canada and work in a Hospital where faxes are still used. It's still the best way to get a patient's chart summary from an other hospital.

[@tobey8023]

Michael J. Fax

[@generalgrievousjunior119]

Hi Matt! I have just come from your wonderful presentation at the Open in Norwich, where I secured your autograph. Everyone absolutely loved it- it was the best presentation so far in the event's history. Thanks again, JP.

[@anarchyseeds4406]

You're one of my favorite comedians Matt, I'm downloading now! Can't wait to watch in full!

[@artzfreak]

I wish fax machines were as dead as he seems to think. I had to stay late at work last week because someone faxed us a 150 page document that took 90 min to print full of extremely confidential client information that I couldn't just leave on the machine for some random janitor to see. Except that the fax didn't completely go through. So they tried again. And again three more times the next morning. That was a fun day.

[@MyRocx]

I was impressed by the double tie and I re-winded the first time I saw it come out. Very well played.

[@MAlanThomasII]

There's a surprising number of weird things that use faxes (at least in the U.S.), especially if you need to send someone a signed document. As a result, a scanner hooked up to an internet fax server is one of the more popular services offered by the public library where I work.

[@DenisRyan]

That's not very mobile. What you need to do is build it into a back pack and call it the FaxPax.

[@Maxawa0851]

He meant mobile as in like a phone call

[@kittyrules]

Parker stand up

[@ashtonhoward5582]

Parker, lay down.

[@laptop006]

Can we get a laserdisc version?

[@gregswallow9721]

There was, in the 80s, a product called "The Complete Communicator" which allowed a DOS computer to recieve a voice message and call you with the "Voice Mail" for 999 Voice Mail boxes. It could also send fax as a selection from a menu or receive a fax with a voice comment. You could even send a file, any kind, to another computer using "The Complete Computer" as a fax. This would be useful today as, if intercepted, the file is seen only as a black page. If this wasn't enough, you could pipe a call to another program, BBS Host, for the duration of the call; something I used. Then came Windows.

[@kobies]

Wow! Doing it in VHS and selling for £3.14. Love it!!!

[@deluxeassortment]

I can't believe they predicted the rise of Alternative Fax!

[@Birbone21]

Bought a copy, downloading now.

[@Birbone21]

Right after purchase i was brought to the page with download links. And then i also received 2 email messages, one with billing info and one with download links.

[@Birbone21]

The email with download links came in about 10 minutes after email with order confirmation.

[@KlevaOyibo]

2020 05 03 - No way - as of today this number is still valid... Added to my contacts so that I can "drunk fax" Matt Parker all the way from South Africa!

[@15october91]

Full of interesting Fax!

[@kwinvdv]

I wonder how many parker squares he has received over the fax.

[@johnladuke6475]

The only thing holding me back from going and getting some kind of program to send faxes to that machine is that this video was posted five years ago and I'm not sure if Matt is still paying for cell service for his mobile fax. Sending a fax that can't be received would just be pointless, right?

[@SamuelBoshier]

That fax machine better still be in operation.

[@AboboKing]

Banks, realtors, and government offices still use fax machines a lot in the US.

[@billborrowed3939]

Man, a bttf AND a Jurassic Park reference. This man is living the peak of cinema.

[@joestutler6582]

Regarding the mobile fax machine, we were using the Lightweight Digital Facsimile model # AN/UXC-7 mounted in vehicles during Desert Storm 32+ years ago.

[@insignificantfigure3876]

Awesome! I didn't know these were available! Can't wait to see you on your inevitable world tour :)

[@Flyinglife397]

Just bought the dvd super excited to get this in the mail.

[@RMoribayashi]

Fax machines are still used in the US, mostly for secure document transfer. The biggest users are the medical establishment and utilities like gas, water and electric. While they do transfer internal documents by intranet, and communicate with customers by email, many still require that signed forms be sent by fax instead of a PDF over email.

[@TzhaarProductions]

Haha! I was just checking if I missed you put the ties on and I thought to myself "must be a camera cut" or "that's why it cuts away"! Cheers for the explanation!

[@ABlindMoose]

Wow. Drunk faxing sounds like something I would do. Is your fax (omg there is a fax emoji 📠) still live? Or... Working... Or whatever the appropriate term for a fax that can receive faxes is?

[@dom1310df]

Lisa Lund Listening? No, that sounds creepy

[@MephLeo]

There's only one way to find it out... you know what it is...

[@ErikOosterwal]

Leopoldo Aranha - I know what that one way is! You make a spreadsheet.

[@espenskeys]

Yes finally available to my country! The previous Amazon versions weren't available - soooo psyched! :)

[@Aceshifter]

In case the fax machine is still active someone will probably go overboard and start mailing you daily parker squares or something. (maybe me)

[@AnimationGoneWrong]

Very entertaining... love all the fax and figures

[@DoctorX17]

The fact that you have it on VHS is amazing

[@IshanPandit]

Aha the Jurassic quote "didn't stop to think if i should"

[@awatchman4347]

That double tie add on you did was smooth

[@gileswendes1934]

Brave to put this online! *sends Matt a fax*

[@sitearm]

In US buy and use fax machines all the time as part of all-in-one printers (print, copy, scan, fax). Still use fax to place orders with broker - sign the form and fax it over. Fax lives! : )

[@lammy3055]

at 1:34 my brain exploded from too much meta

[@slikrx]

A post facts world. Alternative facts. Yep, VERY prescient.

[@Elleander1]

Zero Fax Given.

[@quasar_catfish]

Is it plugged in now?

[@sirjmo]

I hope so.

[@mr.e3987]

Whats the app called aha

[@zadachihard4034]

than you for your work, best wishes

[@TheClumsyFairy]

Matt, When ever I see your stuff I think of a train from London to Paris.... EuroStar... (Your a star)!!!

[@Khronosian]

Added to my Watch Later list, so I can drunkenly fax Matt various images of wildlife and exotic desserts later this week. I'll keep you dudes posted.

[@magnusbarse]

Alternative facts is still hilarious in 2021!

[@remygrandin]

I can confirm the tie thing, I was there :-) (#humbleBrag)

[@mentatphilosopher]

Mobile Phones had fax capability before apps, that is you could connect a mobile to a fax machine. The service option codes are 0x5 for a Group 3 Facsimile at 9.6kbps and 0xd for a Group 3 Facsimile at 14.4kbps. You would get a separate directory number for your mobile fax and then when it was called you were paged and served with that service option code. This was important because the voice coders used would filter out some of the frequencies needed and therefore needed to know it was a fax.

[@tomstech4390]

9:33 hope you remove the square bit at the front so you can't accidentally record over it. The front looks really clean and simple, Did you edit any of it in afterefax?

[@lheofacker]

I loved the special double tie E-fax

[@tryplot]

receipt paper on an accessory for an iphone with a fax app, and you've truly made a portable fax machine.

[@jameskerns717]

In 1966 fax technology used revolving drums that had to sync up on both ends. The sending unit would scan slowly across as the drum revolved under the scan head and the receiving unit would typically use a thermal paper to print on the drum. And, you could sit there and watch the spinning image appear (left to right if I recall correctly) as the bottom of the paper went flap, flap, flap...

[@MatheusC1729]

Man, you're a inspiration. I study Applyed Mathmatics in FGV, Rio de Janeiro, and here he have this talent show, the Fibonight (I know, the name is great). I thought "I can make people laugh like Matt Parker" And I told a lot of jokes there, in froint of my professors. The reactions was variable, but my professors liked, and some other students too! I told one or two jokes of yours in Portuguese, but most of all was selfmade.

[@vivianlowenstein2622]

Exchange rates may vary but mathematical constants won't 😂😂

[@VEE727]

This is why I subscribed you years ago

[@jdpjamesp]

Can you do a proof of the 'Japanese' multiplication method? The one using lines and where they bisect to calculate the answer.

[@kauhanen44]

--|---|---|-- --|---|---|-- As you can see, it's 2*3. Look at the points where the lines cross and think of each of them as squares with side length 1. Since we already know that area of a rectangular shape is height*length, we can just count the horizontal points where they cross and we get 3. If we count the points vertically, we get two. The area of this grid is 2*3=6. A general case is the same, just substitute 2 with y and 3 with x.

[@andrewzuo86]

The 'Japanese' multiplication method is reducible to the 'American' multiplication method. And we already know that's correct. QED.

[@geekjokes8458]

vi hart has a video on it, dont remember what its called

[@msclrhd]

"Re: Visual Multiplication and 48/2(9+3)" -- kzbin.info/www/bejne/l17IaZmwpttmeac

[@cemerson]

It's just long multiplication in disguise...

[@ReedoTV]

I see the A-fax and B-fax, but sadly Ceefax is no longer with us

[@ZXGuesser]

You could skip a few letters and read Teefax instead facebook.com/teefaxText

[@MrJzM]

Show me the carfax

[@PhilBagels]

How about Sandy Koufax?

[@Kwizii]

Try Equifax

[@LinusNil]

Drunk faxing is the best!

[@Dufftata]

I just love the self-fullfilling-prophecy-joke of that the 2 tide trend x'D

[@MichaelWarman]

In 24/7 industries that can't switch off without catastrophe, there are lots of instances of outdated technology being used; I work in energy, we send and receive a whole lot of faxes. Someone recently joined the company I work for who was previously in shipping, where they also faxed a lot.

[@trickytreyperfected1482]

"Prime Faxtors" he did not just do that

[@elhtmlnoexisteelhtmlnoexis7965]

It was very common in Spain for some companies to ask you to send a fax to i.e. end a phone line contract, assurance etc Seems that It's mostly dead by now but I won't be surprised to know that public administration and some companies use It to send invoices, POD's and things like that.

[@dalitas]

for the first few minutes i kept on thinking: what parker resolution, this isnt 1080p.

[@babbetteduboise4284]

I use fax machines quite a bit. Probably enough to have one in my home. What I don't have is a phone line.

[@WoodCat]

The pause with VHS effect occured right at the point I switched from 360 to 1080p... My brain was broken for a second.

[@nosheen3721]

I work for the NHS in a GP surgery and fax use is integral to everything we do. I don't know what we would do without it haha!

[@camiblack1]

Prime Faxtors... these puns are wild. true fax.

[@andykillsu]

Did I hear Tau YES PLEASE!

[@mathematics117]

There are surprising amount of places that still use Fax Machines XD

[@rewrose2838]

Ah Matt Parker in all his StandupMathy goodness, only here on Numberphile would you find su- _nevermind_

[@dane2701]

Ow, that VHS release 'joke' just made me choke on my tea!

[@jasckon7994]

7:54 could you call it the "faxual revolution?"

[@jamesspry3294]

When I first started working as a graduate engineer (mid nineties) my boss had a mobile that could send and receive faxes. It was one of the first digital mobiles (at the change over from analogue). And it pre-dated emails. Which made it all redundant about a year later anyway... Also, it never worked properly...

[@olik136]

every office I know still has a fax machine...

[@DustinRodriguez1_0]

I actually have a question about your multiformat release... it could turn out to be extremely useful to me! Would the video content on the VHS be as identical as mastering makes possible to the other formats? I have been wanting to experiment with cleaning up VHS footage to remove artifacts introduced by the format which requires knowing the "true value" of the pixels. My intention has been to use synthetic video signals generated programmatically (and I would still do that) so that comparison with the output to determine success rate could be done, along with the Creative Commons 'Big Buck Bunny' video and anything else I could find... but I'd not yet figured out what to do about recorded videos just like yours. If there aren't a great deal of format-specific differences, that VHS could be pretty handy to me!

[@sargentcolon2323]

Hospitals in the UK still use fax machines. 2021!!!

[@snowshoes7]

Quick! Someone fax him a picture of Rick Astley!

[@iabervon]

I don't know about fax machines, but just a few days ago, I found that my cell phone could connect wirelessly to an unsecured printer in a random office in an office building. That could be what was actually depicted in BttF2, and we wouldn't have known the difference at the time.

[@BloodyRainRang]

"I spent so much time thinking about whenever I COULD that I forgot to think about whenever I SHOULD" xD That line alone is already worth more likes than YT allows (hint: more than 1)

[@FoxChaotica]

Here's a fun fact for those who have seen the faxes come through from the interval. When Matt says "OK, who faxed in binary? Who!?" in the recorded DVD footage, that was me, but the circumstances surrounding it are insane. When I sent that fax, I sent it from the middle of a university lecture, on the complete other side of the country. I *know* it's mine, because it decoded exactly to a portion of my message, and my signature is just legible enough on the page shown. As for the translation, it reads "How many primes does it take to change a lightbulb? 1, itself"

[@mal2ksc]

The mid-90s show _Loveline_ had fax machines on shelves above the studio set, so that any time someone faxed in a question, it would literally fall on the hosts.

[@oldcowbb]

it's not my favourite math constant, it's my favourite math constant divided by 2

[@Krebzonide]

I rewound to see you put the ties on and I saw it then you came in to tell us about it and I was sitting there like "I already know".

[@ibycus314]

Actually fax machines are still in regular use in specialized industries. Great for sending medical records around (in veterinary medicine many practices use paper records rather than electronic). Sending them via fax means no one has to scan, email, receive, print, mark as received, etc. just fax and it’s there.

[@chr13]

I got this suggested after I had watched a video about the fact that the German Federal Constitutional Court only accepts letters and faxes but no e-mails.

[@Grimlock1979]

How faxinating