made most clear by the decision to change the end-
ing of the film. In the original ending, Alex commits
suicide in such a way as to make it look as though
Dan killed her. Dan is arrested for her murder. Test
audiences reacted negatively to an ending in which
the male protagonist was punished too severely and
the female antagonist seemed to succeed, so the end
was reshot.
Impact Fatal Attractiontriggered cultural conversa-
tions on a variety of levels. Some discussions ques-
tioned whether Dan or Alex was the true victim, or
whether it was actually the innocent wife who had
been forced to kill to save her husband. Many men
saw the film as a cautionary tale about the dangers of
infidelity. Students of culture saw it as indicative of
the way Hollywood portrayed female power and sex-
uality in the 1980’s. So powerful was that portrayal
that Glenn Close became typecast for years. Just the
thought of her role could make some men cringe in
horror.
Further Reading
Dougan, Andy.Michael Douglas: Out of the Shadows.
London: Robson, 2001.
Parker, John.Michael Douglas: Acting on Instinct. Lon-
don: Headline, 1994.
Dale L. Flesher
See also Academy Awards; Action films; Close,
Glenn; Douglas, Michael; Feminism; Film in the
United States; Horror films; Marriage and divorce.
Fax machines
Identification Machine that transmit and receive
facsimiles of written documents over telephone
lines
The development of fax machines during the 1980’s pro-
vided an inexpensive, fast, and reliable means for electroni-
cally transmitting correspondence, contracts, handwritten
notes, and illustrations.
The original concept for a facsimile (fax) machine
was patented by Alexander Bain in 1843. The first
commercial fax system was produced in France in
- It was too slow to be of any practical use. Fax
machines did not begin to gain practical accep-
tance and popularity until the 1970’s; even then,
they were at first prohibitively expensive. The price
of fax machines started to decrease in the late
1970’s and the 1980’s. The stimulus that initiated
the widespread use of fax machines came in 1983,
when a standard protocol for sending faxes at rates
of 9,600 bits per second (bps) was adopted. This
became known as the Group 3 standard. In 1985,
GammaLink produced the first computer fax
board. As machines became faster and cheaper, fax
sales took off in the 1980’s. The more were sold, the
more useful they became, since it made sense to
purchase a fax machine only if one’s colleagues also
possessed them. In 1983, over 100,000 machines
were sold. That number was doubled in 1986. Canon
introduced the first plain-paper fax machine in- By 1989, over 4 million fax machines were in
use in the United States.
During the 1980’s, fax machines became an inte-
gral part of telecommunications around the world.
News services used them to send news articles and
photos to news offices and television companies.
Using fax machines, weather services sent weather
charts, maps, and information to weather stations
and television companies worldwide. Banks and fi-
nancial institutions used them to send important
personal information and legal documentation.
Many businesses used faxes to share records and da-
tabases.
Impact By the late 1980’s, fax machines had dra-
matically changed how communication occurred
around the world. Combining the functions of a dig-
ital scanner, a modem, and a printer, the machines
could copy, transmit, and reproduce handwritten or
printed materials, drawings, maps, and photographs
with a high degree of resolution. Images could be
sent almost anywhere in the world at any time.
The evolution of fax machines led to a wide vari-
ety of brands and styles and a wide range of capabili-
ties. Consumers could eventually buy “all-in-one”
printers that included a fax machine, a photocopier,
a scanner, and a printer, all in one system. Adoption
of the Group 3 standard of fax transmission in 1983
eventually led to Group 4 fax machines. These faxes
worked with Integrated Services Digital Network
(ISDN) lines and could scan with a resolution of 400
dots per inch (dpi), enabling the copying and trans-
mission of engineering drawings. The development
of fax machine technology also played an important
role in the production of cellular phones that began
in the 1980’s.362 Fax machines The Eighties in America