Giovanni Caselli, a Florentine priest and physicist based in Paris, develops between 1856 and 1861 the pantelegraph: a system for transmitting images and handwritten text over distance via telegraph cable, using a synchronized pendulum and a needle that scans a tin sheet. Napoleon III authorizes it for commercial use between Paris and Lyon in 1865; it comes to operate between Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Bordeaux. It is the first functional, commercial facsimile (fax) system in history, operational 120 years before the thermal-paper fax. The canonical narrative of telecommunications rarely mentions him.