5 Modern Technologies That Are Way Older Than You Think  With
modern science churning out inventions so quickly that our
phones are obsolete 48 hours after we buy them, we tend to
assume that pretty much every awesome thing in our lives is a
relatively recent innovation. And as we've reported before, that
impression often lands ridiculously far from the truth. Many of
the technologies we automatically peg as modern are actually
way, way older than we think.  #5. The Fax Machine Was Invented
Before the Civil War   Unless you're super old school or you
live in Japan, you probably know the fax machine mainly as that
mysterious thing gathering dust at the corner of your office.
But some of us do remember a time when these machines seemed
like magical saviors that prevented us from having to wait a
week for documents to get delivered (or lost) by the postal
service. It wasn't that many years ago -- that is, before email
was a thing -- that the fax was the cutting-edge king of the
information superhighway.  Rickrol