Facsimilies
Facsimiles are an earlier way of communicating documents from one physical location to another. The mechanism was to combine early copier technology with telephony data transfer to create a new mode of communication of physical data.
Fax machines used to exist as a single-function machine integrated with a telephone, and many advanced Fax machines included a copier function which used the same mechanism as the Fax data input (typically using the sheet-feed method).
For enterprise use, fax functionality integrated into multifunctional copier, scanner and printer units enable a document copy to be transferred electronically without a computer terminal or network. The recipient can either receive the copy by their own personal fax machine or local multifunctional system with telephony connection.
This utilization of the facsimile communication method by integrating it with an All-in-One, allows a single document to be simultaneously photocopied for physical output, scanned to digital storage, while still faxed to a different location.