Bain's machine was dated 1842, commercial service began at Paris, 1863.
I think NYU law school has some interesting bits on the early fax service.
On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Sellam Ismail wrote:
  On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, William Donzelli wrote:
   I was
aware that Toshiba was building facsimile machines in 1928
 in Japan, but I didn't know the ability to send an image to a remote
 location predated the deployment of electricity. 
 It may have been the very early 1800s, but such machines do exist.
 Pentelegraph (sp?) is one of them. 
 
 As far as I know, the first facsimile machine was invented in around 1826
 (there was a nice little article about it in the back of Success magazine
 [of all places] over a year ago).
 Napolean supposedly deployed them all around Europe so that he could
 distribute intelligence and battle plans fast and efficiently.
 Sellam                                 International Man of Intrigue and Danger
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