Alexander Bain

Alexander Bain was one of the most prolific inventors of the nineteenth century, whose notable innovations include the fax machine and the electric clock.

Bain was not the typical inventor of the era: he left school at the age of twelve to work alongside his father, who was a tenant crofter near Watten in Caithness. His skill in fixing things led to an apprenticeship, at the age of 20, with a clockmaker in Wick.

After seven years, he moved to London where, unimpressed by the new clocks he saw demonstrated at several evening lectures, he decided to make his own, which incorporated an electromagnet on the pendulum between two fixed magnets. At the same time, Bain invented a chemical telegraph which used specially treated paper to send messages.

In 1844 Bain was contracted to construct a 46-mile telegraph line between Edinburgh and Glasgow so that an electric clock in one city could transmit the time to its counterpart in the other. Bain was working at a time when being ‘the first’ to demonstrate a particular innovation could generate great financial possibilities.

This bred intense competition among inventors and disputes over patents could be fiercely contested. Bain went to the US in 1848 in order to capitalise on the railway boom, but a bruising Supreme Court defeat to a rival inventor left him financially ruined.

Over the course of his life, Bain patented many inventions, including a fire alarm, a marine depth sounder, and a system for recording ships’ direction and speed at sea.