Obligatory “There was a period of time where Abraham Lincoln could have sent a fax to a Samurai” joke.
That sounds wrong, but I don’t know enough about samurai’s fax technology to dispute it.
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.
And there’s no record that they did. Talk about missing a great opportunity
