This ingenious man, whose inventions in connection with the electric
telegraph entitle his name to be held in grateful remembrance, died in
January last at the new Home for Incurables at Broomhill,
Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, Scotland, and on Saturday his remains
were interred in the burying ground in the neighborhood of that town
known as the Old Aisle Cemetery. Mr. Bain, who was about sixty-six
years of age, was a native of Thurso. He was the inventor of the
electro-chemical printing telegraph, the electro-magnetic clock, and
of perforated paper for automatic transmission of messages, and was
author of a number of books and pamphlets relating to these subjects.
Sir William Thomson, in his address to the Mathematical Section of the
British Association at its meeting in Glasgow last year, said: "In the
United States Telegraphic Department of the Great Exhibition at
Philadelphia, I saw Edison's automatic telegraph delivering 1,015
words in 57 seconds. This was done by the long neglected
electro-chemical method of Bain, long ago condemned in England to the
helot work of recording from a relay, and turned adrift as needlessly
delicate for that." Mr. Bain was stricken by paralysis, and suffered
from complete loss of power in the lower limbs. For some time he had
received a pension from the government, obtained for him, we believe,
through the instrumentality of Sir William Thomson. Mr. Bain was a
widower, and has left a son and daughter, the former of whom is in
America, and the latter at present on the Continent. Photographs of
him by Mayall were recently presented to the Society of Telegraph
Engineers and the American Society of Telegraphers at Philadelphia.
--_The Engineer._
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