That's fascinating. But what was the modulation scheme? What was the printing mechanism? Achieving this, stand-alone without user intervention in a 100% analogue system sounds like a story worth a bit more technical detail..
I remember writing a "wefax"decoder for the Atari 800XL that grabbed these weather facsimile signals off a shortwave radio. The code was published in a magazine, though the name escapes me at the moment. I thought it was pretty amazing, as a kid, to see images appear slowly on my screen while listening to the dulcet tones (ha!) of the wefax audio stream.
http://www.atarimagazines.com/v5n5/wefaxinterface.html
Was that it?