• Lost_My_Mind
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    14 days ago

    That sounds wrong, but I don’t know enough about samurai’s fax technology to dispute it.

    • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de
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      14 days ago

      It’s mostly a “well, technically” kind of thing. First prototypes were around since the 1840s but the first commercial telefax service was introduced in February 1865, a little under two months before Lincoln was killed. Samurai were around until the late 1860s or early 1870s. I can’t quite find when the first telefax machine was operated in Japan but 1928 shows up on some lists.

      So yeah, Lincoln could have sent a fax to a samurai if they both had traveled to France just a few weeks before Lincoln’s death.