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| BAIN
No history of electric telegraphy can ignore Alexander Bain, who lived from 1811 until 1877. He was a Scottish watchmaker by profession and a prolific inventor active at the same time as Cooke and Wheatstone. His principal contributions to telegraphy were his improvements to the electric clock and to the chemical telegraph. By all accounts he was a difficult man to negotiate with and according to some a ferocious drunk. He was intemperate to excess; contriving disputes with Wheatstone over clocks, with Bakewell over copying telegraphs and with Shepherd, another patentee of clocks, as well as with the Morse Syndicate in America. Bain died in relative poverty and is commonly portrayed as a Celtic martyr impoverished by class prejudice.
In truth Bain’s principle character weakness was an inability to collaborate with his peers; a plain mechanic, he never had a scientific or technical mentor. Moreover, he was unable to maintain any of the professional partnerships that he attempted with which to channel his ideas into consistent reality. He seems to have gone out of his way to give offence to potential allies.
Bain Clock 1848 An electric register clock widely used in the telegraph stations of the Electric Telegraph Company Bain’s first accomplishment was his electric clock, which he patented in 1841 with the London watch- and clock-maker John Barwise, of 25 St Martin’s Lane, Charing Cross. This used an electrically-regulated pendulum to propel the time-keeping movement, with a galvanic source made from metallic plates buried in damp soil. It was not the first galvanic clock; this had been devised by Carl August von Steinheil in Munich in 1839. 
Bain Pendulum 1848 The two forms of the electric pendulum, on the left the electro-magnet is wrapped around the armature, on the right the pendulum swings within a pair of circular electro-magnets. The “switches” above on the long shaft. The arrows show the circuit of electricity from Bain’s ground plate cells.  
Bain Clockwork 1848 Left are the works that converted the pendulum action into rotary movement by striking a small lever at the base. Bain Companion Clock 1848 Right is a back view of a “slave” dial, much smaller than the master clock. The partnership managed to produce sixty of Barwise & Bain’s electric clocks, “working at the expense of 2d a week”, for exhibition at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, 309 Regent Street, London, during July, August and September 1841. These were made at Alexander Bain’s Electric Clock & Telegraph Manufactory, 11 Hanover Street, Edinburgh. As well as devising several forms of electric pendulum or ‘master’ clock, which included a simplified mechanism for converting the swing action into rotary motion, Bain placed many much smaller ‘companion’, now known as ‘slave’, dials in the same circuit. Adjusting the master simultaneously corrected the companions which worked in precise synchronicity. More than that in 1848 he had a master clock in Edinburgh regulate a small companion forty-six miles away in Glasgow with a circuit along the railway between the two cities.
It proved to be the first of many missed opportunities in Bain’s life; the partnership failed and Barwise went on to found the British Watch Company in 1843, the first attempt to factory-make timepieces in volume.
Bain type-printing telegraph 1841 An electrically-controlled mechanical telegraph Using the rotating indicator to print type spirally on the upper drum. It was not developed beyond a prototype
By August 1841 Bain had moved on and the electric clocks at the Polytechnic Institution were joined by the first display of Bain’s electro-magnetic printing telegraph. This was one of a number of mechanical signal and printing telegraphs, some of such complexity as to be best described as contraptions, devised by Bain before completing his chemical telegraph patent. As with the electric clock, Bain did not invent the principle of the chemical telegraph, in which paper or cloth is treated to make it sensitive to electric current; in England this originated with Edward Davy’s patent of 1838, but Bain certainly made the principle practical in his English patent of 1843. The original version was an adaptation of his complex mechanical telegraph, writing its dot and dash cypher in a spiral on a paper cylinder wrapped around a revolving brass drum.
The perfected Bain chemical telegraph of 1843 consisted of a finger pedal to make and break the circuit and a roll of electrically-sensitive paper fed by clockwork between a brass roller and a metal feeler as part of the circuit. The current caused a mark to be made on the paper in a series of dots and dashes interpreted into the roman alphabet in so-called “Bain Code”. 
Bain Chemical Telegraph 1843 Clockwork-driven, with weights to create adhesion on the roller that moves the damp electro-sensitive tape. It was not used commercially until it was much simplified 
Bain Key or Tapper 1843 Bain also devised an ingeniously simple instrument in 1843, the so-called I & V telegraph, using a single wire circuit. In this an armature worked left (I) or right (V) within two horizontal semi-circular electro-magnets in the low, flat mahogany case of the “indicator” as the polarity of the current was altered by metal connectors attached to the wooden double-keys of the sender or “communicator”. The code for this device was based on numerical combinations of 1 and 5, the roman I and V. It was included as an afterthought to his patent for the chemical telegraph and was widely used in Austria, as well as briefly between Edinburgh and Glasgow. He improved the I & V telegraph in his patent of 1845 by substituting a drop-handled commutator for the keys, so that it looked more like a common single-needle instrument, and legally protected the I & V code. This was the apparatus used on the 46 mile Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway from June 6, 1846. It cost the railway £50 a mile to construct. 
Bain improved I & V Telegraph 1845 The drop handle is spring-loaded to return to the mid-point Early in 1842 Bain had acquired a patron, John Finlaison, of Alghers House, Loughton, Essex, who had seen his clocks at the Polytechnic. Finlaison was a man of some wealth, eminent in the insurance industry, Actuary of the National Debt and Government Calculator. The association initially came about from their common origin in the north of Scotland. Finlaison was generous, providing Bain with funds, assistance in publicising his devices and allowing the grounds of his house in Essex to be used for experiments. Bain was also to meet Matilda Bowie, the widowed sister of Finlaison’s wife, at Loughton and was to marry her in 1844, adopting also her six year old daughter. Finlaison was sufficiently impressed with Bain’s work to loan him £3,000 in 1846 to complete his principal telegraphic work, the circuit between Edinburgh and Glasgow. This was used to demonstrate both his I & V telegraph and the transmission of time using his electric clock. He also paid to have a large electric clock installed in the new Church of St John the Baptist, in Church Lane, Loughton in 1848. It proved unreliable and was replaced in 1850, by which time John Finlaison had moved to Lower Mead, Richmond-upon-Thames, Surrey and Bain was in America. The relationship between Finlaison and Bain does not seem to have survived beyond 1850. In December 1844 Bain patented a complex process for registering the direction and distance travelled by ocean-going ships, and for remote measurement of temperature and speed, the elements all using electricity. The patent was in five parts, 1) registering the direction of a ship’s course over distance using a magnetic compass and a rotary log, 2) registering the direction of a ship’s course over distance at certain intervals of time as in 1) by the addition of a chronometer 3) printing the direction of a ship’s course and the distance travelled, 4) ascertaining the temperature in the holds of ships and 5) taking soundings at sea. In effect the “Bain Navigator” consisted of a magnetic compass, a chronometer and a speed and distance log, electrically monitored and recording data constantly on a paper disc moved by clockwork. It was never perfected.
The Bain chemical telegraph was purchased by the Electric Telegraph Company in Britain and used between 1848 and 1862 on its longest and busiest circuits, and for the intense traffic between its West End office in the Strand and its Central Station at Founders’ Court. He improved this apparatus during 1848 to create the fast telegraph - where the ‘finger pedal’ was replaced by a small manual hole-punch and strips of paper that were fed into a rotary transmitter. The Company also used his ‘Bain code’ in these circuits, and bought his clock patent, intending to manufacture them for sale. He had previously licensed the entire French rights for the chemical telegraph to William Boggett, a button manufacturer, of 50 St Martin’s Lane, Charing Cross, an electrical dilettante who corresponded with Michael Faraday. It was tried over ever longer distances and at remarkable speeds but was not adopted in France.
Although it was extremely sensitive, requiring relatively little galvanic energy in its circuits, the chief disadvantage of the chemical telegraph was the need for the marking paper to be kept damp in use, which made it frail and malodorous. It was also vulnerable to disruption by ‘atmospheric electricity’. When used in America Bain’s chemical-paper rolls were replaced by more durable flat disks of treated paper on a metal plate, twenty-inches in diameter, rotated by a clockwork-driven roller, and the receiving wire caused to move spirally across the disk on a metal arm from central spindle in the manner of a gramophone needle.
The Bain chemical telegraph was used in the Electric’s busiest domestic circuits until replaced by the American telegraph in 1862 and later by Charles Wheatstone’s automatic telegraph. Both of these substituted more stable electro-magnetic ‘writers’ using ink on a plain-paper tape for chemical elements.
The Electric Telegraph Company paid Bain £7,500 for his initial clock and telegraph patents in Britain and allowed him £2,500 contingent on his services to the firm in 1846. He became a director of the Company for a short while. When he patented the fast telegraph in 1848 the Company purchased the rights for Britain for £13,250, half in cash, half in shares. Bain was also scrupulous in simultaneously patenting his clock and telegraphs throughout Europe and America. The Electric Telegraph Company formed a separate Clock Department and initially displayed his electric clocks at their show- and news-rooms at 142 Strand, opposite their first chief office at 345 Strand. They retained Bain’s clock manufactory at 11 Hanover Street, Edinburgh until 1848 when it was closed and the work contracted out to William Reid in London. In August 1847 the manufactory was developing an electric chronometer, to keep perfect time at sea, using salt water to produce a continuous source of galvanic energy. The electric clocks were extremely expensive, selling for £16 16s for ‘master’ timepieces and £10 10s for each ‘companion’ dial. Running costs were high, too: 1d a week using a single small Smee zinc-silver cell, which lasted just fourteen days. The Electric company had severe financial problems in the late 1840s and was unable to proceed with the marketing of electric clocks. It is likely that Bain was disillusioned with this; but he had also failed to use his period with the Electric to build any peer relationships. The company’s engineers, rather than Bain, had to adapt the fast telegraph into an effective device.
Bain left England in 1848 for New York after commuting his payment from the Electric Telegraph Company, receiving instead the residual rights to the electric clock patent and the chemical telegraph rights for British North America. The Company also lent him £1,000 at 4% interest. On his arrival he licensed his American patent for the chemical telegraph to Henry Rogers & Company of Baltimore, Maryland, to be used in a 250 miles line between New York and Washington, by way of Philadelphia and Baltimore, challenging the Morse Syndicate over that route. Shortly after Bain entered into another licensing agreement with Henry O’Reilly, who had been previously a Morse licensee, who undertook to make 800 miles of telegraph line a year working his patents. Bain was to receive $30 per mile and 25% of the paid-up stock of these new main lines, and 10% of the stock for all branch circuits. O’Reilly constructed six Bain lines; 1] from Boston to New York; 2] from Buffalo to New York; 3] from Boston to Portland, Maine; 4] from Boston to Burlington in Vermont; 5] from Louisville, Kentucky, to New Orleans, Louisiana; and 6] minor lines in Massachusetts and Vermont.
Bain Chemical Telegraph This wrote Bain Code spirally on to a damp paper disk. On the unusually ornamental table are, from the left, the receiving disk and writing arm, the large clockwork mechanism to turn the disk, the sending press-key to the front, and Bain's glass-disk alarm on the right. Used only in the United States from 1850 to 1868 Henry O’Reilly was driven into bankruptcy by the Morse Syndicate in 1851 and his interest in the Bain patents and his 2,000 miles of line in the United States passed to Marshall Lefferts. Not long after this Lefferts came to an agreement with the Syndicate to merge their competing interests.
In his absence from London the very short-lived Electric Time Company intended to promote a Bill for an Act of Parliament to acquire the residue of Bain’s clock patent and to manufacture his timepieces. The Bill authorised its provision of timepieces and its charging for supplying time by electricity, as well as powers to open up roads, streets and highways in England and Wales for its time circuits. The Bill was deposited on November 1, 1852 but then almost immediately abandoned. The Time company failed miserably, not making a single electric clock and leaving Bain with liabilities of £4,364.
Outside of Britain and America Bain’s earlier I & V telegraph had been adopted by the k.k. Staatstelegraph, the Austrian Imperial and Royal State Telegraph, and was used for public service between 1846 and 1850. It was retained in railway service until 1870. During May 1850 a new Bain automatic telegraph was presented to la Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale in Paris, France. This comprised, as with his fast telegraph, a small punch making long and short holes in a long paper tape which was rolled on to a wooden cylinder. The second component was a sending apparatus that fed, by means of a hand crank, the punched paper between four metallic feelers and a metallic cylinder creating a circuit. The final part, a clockwork-driven receiver, had a rotating metallic disk covered with a circular sheet of chemically-damped paper. A screw carrying an electrical feeler spanned the radius of the disk, as the disk rotated, “turning with great quickness”, so the screw moved the feeler which lay on the damp paper from its rim to its axis writing a spiral of long and short dashes. When the apparatus was tested by the assembled scientists it chemically printed 1,200 ‘letters’ in forty-five seconds.
Subsequently this Bain automatic telegraph was given a more robust trial on the circuit between Paris and Lyons. The two wires of this line were joined at Lyons creating a 336 mile circuit back to Paris, to which were added wire coils to extend the length to 1,082 miles. A message of 282 words was then transmitted and received on the adjacent disk in fifty-two seconds. Alexander Bain, inventor, had a stand in the galleries of the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851. He exhibited according to the descriptions in the catalogue:
• Patent electric clocks, suitable for halls of mansions, offices, steeples, &c., kept in action by a small galvanic battery, or the electricity of the earth • Time-ball, to be discharged by electricity sent by an ordinary regulator clock • Pair of electro-chemical telegraphs, stated to be capable of transmitting and recording communications at the rate of 1,000 letters, or even 1,000 words, per minute • Patent electro-chemical copying telegraph, said to be capable of copying any figure, such as profiles, autographs, stenography, &c. • Patent electric telegraph for printing all the letters of the alphabet in the roman character Alexander Bain returned to London early in 1852 and acquired a fine shop at 43 Old Bond Street, Mayfair, London, to retail his patent electric clocks. It was, interestingly, just a few minutes walk from Wheatstone Brothers, musical instrument makers, at 20 Conduit Street, Mayfair. He employed John Fletcher, a former bookseller, as manager and head clerk; borrowing several thousand pounds from him and from John George Bonner, a solicitor of influence, apparently to capitalise the new electric clock business. At this time Bain still possessed valid, and possibly valuable, patents in British North America, France, Belgium and Austria for the chemical telegraph; in England for a musical instrument and for the electric ship’s log; and in France for the electric clock. Bain also claimed to possess 100 shares in the Mississippi & Illinois Telegraph Company, 1,354 shares in the People’s Telegraph Line (Louisville to New Orleans), 100 shares in the Ohio, Indiana & Illinois Telegraph Company, 225 shares in the Vermont & Boston Telegraph Company and 71 shares in the New York State Telegraph Company; all of some value in America. Yet on April 4, 1853 Alexander Bain, electric clockmaker, was bankrupt, owing £8,044 to unsecured creditors with just £932 in assets. The court pointedly observed that his borrowings of Fletcher and Bonner had funded a substantial lifestyle rather than improving the clock business. Bain appears to have very quickly squandered a substantial fortune.
Front View Bain Copying Telegraph 1850 An adaptation of an earlier patent, with two rotating drums worked by clockwork, one for sending copies of writing and drawings, one for receiving. The synchronicity of the apparatus is governed by the massive spherical pendulum at its head. A reaction to Bakewell's single-drum copying telegraph patent of 1848
Side View
Bain Copying Telegraph 1850
It is commonly averred that Bain invented the facsimile machine; one version of his chemical telegraph of 1843 was indeed enabled to copy solid metallic type. But it was Frederick Bakewell who patented the first copying telegraph in 1848 to transmit hand-writing or a drawing over distance and perfected it in 1851. Bain had allowed Bakewell access to his workshops in 1847 and contemplated employing him to “prepare a full description of his electrical inventions”. However when Bain was out of the country in the spring of 1848 Bakewell patented his simple copying telegraph and announced it loudly in the magazine that he edited.
Bain, as usual, gave in to one of his rages and attacked Bakewell in the press over several years, going to the trouble of making his own, extremely complex, version of a copying telegraph in 1850. It seems that he eventually came to some sort of business arrangement with Bakewell; he acquired part of a patent the latter obtained for a soda-water making machine, and they had adjacent stands showing copying telegraphs at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
It was Bakewell who wrote, not unreasonably, that “Mr Bain has in several instances introduced complex mechanisms for effecting the simplest purposes”. 
Bain Dial Telegraph 1863 His last telegraph, an eight-inch diameter, four-inch high brass-body with finger-holes to rotate an outer disk, the inner index or needle moved in sympathy. A couple were made in the United States, and still exist After tinkering with odd, non-telegraphic contrivances, including gas-meters and hydraulics, in the instrument-making district of Clerkenwell in London Bain settled once again in America in 1860, and developed there, among other things, a new compact, galvanic dial telegraph in 1863 that worked with a pierced rotating dial much like that on the later mechanical telephone. Samples were made and it would, almost certainly, have been successful in Britain where private wire telegraphy was becoming popular, but its technology was too sophisticated for America. Bain turned to plumbing for a living.
Alexander Bain’s career can be traced through his addresses in the Census. In 1841 he was lodging with William Williams, fishmonger, 35 Wigmore Street, London, no occupation given, but known to be working as an instrument-maker. By 1851 he had married and his wife and six children were living in some style at Beevor (or Beaver) Lodge, Hammersmith. He styled himself, then abroad, as a ‘gentleman’. In 1861 he was resident in New York, probably with his family. Then in 1871, age 60, Bain was once again a lodger, and a widower, at Connop’s Coffee House, 294 Oxford Street, London, as a humble machinist, sharing his accommodation with a letter-carrier, a seaman, a tutor and a domestic servant. Bain had returned to Britain in 1866 and tried to market his automatic chemical telegraph of 1850 for high speed messaging once more, now adapted to have clockwork motion for both sending and receiving. Unsuccessful yet again, he withdrew to Scotland as a journeyman instrument-maker. Alexander Bain died in 1877 whilst living on the charity of former employees of the telegraph companies, having sadly lost all of the opportunities that his electric clock, his chemical telegraph and his I & V telegraph had offered.
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