A Reasonable Facsimile of Global Fast-Talk Arrives : High technology: Images can be sent over a standard telephone line in about 20 seconds to any of the world’s 10 million fax machines, which have become ubiquitous business tools.

Once used mainly to transmit weather maps and news, facsimile machines are now making business better and fast food even faster.

Fax technology has improved in the last 10 years to the point that images can be sent over a standard telephone line in about 20 seconds to any of the world’s 10 million machines.

Facsimiles have become a standard tool for business communications. With prices for the machines now below $1,000, the fax is increasingly the tool of political activists and artists, or people too impatient to wait even for fast food.

Japan leads the world in facsimile use and manufacture.

Faxes are particularly convenient for the Japanese, because their language uses thousands of characters. Handwritten communications are common, even in business, because typing is so difficult, making telexes ill suited to communications.

Japan’s giant electronics companies have helped develop technologies and standards that make the fax a quick, simple and reliable medium.

Like so many other technologies dominated by Japan, the original invention was made elsewhere. Alexander Bain, a Scotsman, built the first device to send images electronically in 1842--34 years before the telephone was invented.

Japanese companies, led by Matsushita Graphic Communication, Ricoh, Canon and NEC, supply about 95% of the world’s fax machines, according to the Communications Industry Assn. of Japan.

In Japan, where about 40% of them are installed, it has become difficult to do business without one. Of the firms with 100 or more employees, 97% have faxes.

Some taxis in Osaka, western Japan, are equipped with faxes, and there are about 35,000 public fax booths in hotels and telephone offices.

Noodle shops, pizza parlors and even radio stations take orders via fax.

A spokeswoman for radio station FM-Japan said: “People send illustrations of themselves or Christmas images, or copies of their business cards. They want to make a strong appeal.”

Fax use is growing most rapidly outside Japan, especially in the United States and Western Europe. U.S. companies are taking the lead in new technologies to link faxes with computers and other equipment.

Dataquest, a market research firm, estimates that 1.4 million faxes will have been installed in the United States by the end of 1989, a figure that is seen rising to 3.2 million by 1993.

McDonald’s, the fast-food chain, has installed fax machines in some outlets near Wall Street, so busy traders can save time by ordering food by fax.

Industry sources estimate that Japan will ship 1.2 million fax machines to the European Community this year, more than double last year’s level.

British-born artist David Hockney used a fax machine to transmit 144 sections of a giant picture across the Atlantic to a gallery outside Bradford in northern England.

The transmission took place before an audience of hundreds, all invited by fax.

The fax revolution has reached the Soviet Union to the extent that Radio Moscow issues a daily fax bulletin with the latest news and a roundup of other stories.

Political activists, mainly the popular-front movements campaigning for greater autonomy in the Baltic republics, Georgia and elsewhere, use faxes routinely.

Fax machines have proliferated in China, where they were used during June’s pro-democracy demonstrations as a conduit for news sent from overseas.

Last month, Beijing tightened security on fax machines to counter a campaign by the Federation for Democracy in China, a Paris-based exiled opposition group that tried to flood the country with anti-government propaganda.

“If counter-revolutionary materials are received, they must be sealed immediately and handed over to the police,” a government order said.

It ordered that access to fax machines in Beijing offices be restricted.

In Western nations, the concern is not the free flow of information but the spread of “junk faxes,” ads that tie up users’ machines and consume their paper.