PTFO - The Fax and the Furious: How One Screeching Machine Upended Sports — and Society as We Knew It
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What is the significance of the phrase 'I'm back' in sports history?
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This studio is a time machine today. We are traveling back in time. Do you remember the relic on our desk here? I do.
I still technically own a fax machine. Now, is this a plain paper fax or is it the thermal paper fax? This is a plain paper fax.
This is, she is, well, I guess he is, the brother and telefax 1570 MC from, I believe it's a mid-90s vintage. Ooh, the sound. Those beeps.
It sounds like the wheel on Price is Right when it's spinning around. Yes. Can you make that sound some more? That's so satisfying. It is. First of all, just the tactile nature of it, touching it.
The haptic sensation of pressing a keypad on a... And again, this is... Yeah, reach over there. Yep. It feels good. We don't do that enough. No. We don't dial.
When's the last time you...
pressed a button. When was the last time you beheld a 15 by 15, eight and a half inch high gray device that was essential to your former life? was instrumental in my childhood memory. And also, this is not a joke. We bought this on eBay. We had a box in this studio yesterday and the cleaning crew, our great cleaning crew here in our building, threw out the box containing like the headset because they thought it was trash. They're like, this can- It's being disposed, this relic. This must be a box containing like rotten fruit or some sh**.
Now, the question is, can you, well, I'm sure it's not connected. Whoa. I don't know what's happening.
Must have hit a preset. The spirit has now taken over.
Oh, my God.
Oh. Oh.
Oh.
that sound that satisfaction because sound it was always this moment of suspense before you knew the connection was going to happen then again you heard those high-pitched squealing and wailing from the the machines making their connection and then when you start to hear that scanning going through something was about to happen quote for all of today's needs
And tomorrow's. Whoops. The brother in Telefax. Whoops. 1570 MC.
Whoops.
They failed to anticipate the internet, PDFs, email, all that. Didn't quite anticipate tomorrow. J.A. Adande, head of Northwestern's sports journalism program, my friend and colleague from ESPN, also longtime sports writer, just inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame last year. Congrats, by the way, on that. Thank you. That's pretty cool. That was pretty cool. The fax machine helped me get there. Did you thank the fax in your speech? I should have. What do you feel when you're now communing at this table with this machine that I haven't seen since the 90s?
A lot of nostalgia. The sounds. I didn't anticipate how much the sounds would take me back. And I was thinking ahead of time about that modem wailing. But just the motor whirring, the buttons, the touch tone sounds, all those things that were so important. And that air of excitement. You were about to learn. You were about to find something out.
It's been 30 years this month since the world found out about the greatest facts of all time, written by arguably the greatest athlete of all time. And there is nobody better, I assure you, to travel back in time with me today than J.A. Adande, the journalist who not only reported the story behind that story, but the guy who also now spends his time surrounded by college kids, these journalism students at Northwestern, for whom the technology in question is completely unrecognizable. as is the thing you had to connect the fax machine to in order to actually send a fax. A phone jack. All of which was essential to how sports and journalism worked.
In New York City, actually, there was like a snowstorm, got like a 10.30 deadline. I'm in Penn Station, can't find any phone jacks. I run out in the cold. It's like desolate around Penn Station. It's huge. There's like a foot of snow on the ground. There's no taxis. There's no nothing anywhere. I find a Chinese restaurant and I talk to the guy in front.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
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