Abraham Lincoln could plausibly have sent a fax to a samurai.

  • Vintage facsimile machine
Vintage facsimile machine
Credit: © Luisa Vallon Fumi—iStock/Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine

June 25, 2026

Love it?

The 1860s weren’t eventful just in the United States. As the American Civil War raged in the first half of the decade and Abraham Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated, a way of life was ending in Japan: that of the samurai, who dwindled after the Meiji Restoration both modernized and westernized the country. 

Before that happened, though, there was a brief period of seemingly unlikely convergence during which the 16th U.S. president could theoretically have sent a fax to a samurai. The first fax (short for “facsimile”) machine was invented in 1843 by Scottish mechanic Alexander Bain, but English physicist Frederick Bakewell was the first to actually demonstrate facsimile transmission eight years later — at which time Lincoln was still a lawyer in Illinois and the samurai were still revered halfway across the world.

However, fax technology wasn’t commercialized until 1863, when Italian inventor Giovanni Caselli received a patent for his “telegraphic apparatus.” At the time, Lincoln was fairly busy trying to keep the Union intact and the samurai were fighting for their very existence. Still, Honest Abe could have sent a copy of the Gettysburg Address to a member of Japan’s legendary warrior class had he been so inclined.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

Fax machines are still widely used.

Despite being thought of as a relic of the analog past, fax machines are still widely used — and, by some metrics, the fax market is growing, not shrinking. It’s estimated that as many as 17 billion faxes are sent each year, the health care industry being by far the world’s biggest contributor. This is largely due to HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which sets standards for protecting patient medical information. Fax machines with dedicated phone lines can be HIPAA-compliant, which can’t be said of newer technology such as text messages.

The vast majority (89%) of health care organizations still use fax machines. Because every fax transmission includes the date, time, and both the sender and recipient’s number, many legal, governmental, and tax agencies continue to use them for similar reasons. Courts, for instance, have been accepting faxes as legal proof for decades and continue to do so today.

x