Austin G. Cooley; Helped Develop Fax Machines

Austin G. Cooley, 93, a telecommunications expert who helped develop the fax machine. As a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1920s, he designed transmitters that could translate a photographic negative into electronic signals that could then be sent by radio or telephone and later by satellite. In 1935, Cooley achieved the first transmission of news photographs for the New York Times, pictures of survivors of the ill-fated dirigible Macon. The Macon exploded over the Pacific, killing two. Cooley served in a series of technical and executive positions with subsidiaries of the New York Times Co. beginning in 1935. He later served as vice president of Litton Systems until 1970. He held more than 75 patents on methods and equipment for the transmission of weather maps, medical X-rays, photographs and other material. In Sequim, Wash., on Sept. 7 of a heart attack.