facsimile

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facsimile Systems that provide electronic transmission of ordinary documents, incuding drawings, photographs, and maps. The original document is scanned at the sending station, converted into an analog or digital representation, and sent over a communication channel to the receiving station, which constructs a duplicate image on paper; this image is referred to as a facsimile. Early facsimile systems were exclusively analog, but new systems have been designed that use digital techniques for data encoding and transmission. Commercial facsimile services are known as fax.

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