Bain, Alexander

—Born 1810, died 1877. A Scottish electrician and inventor. He came to London as a journeyman in 1837, and thereafter perfected a number of electrical inventions. These included electrically operated clocks; an earth battery (1843); an apparatus for registering a ship’s progre (1844); and the automat ice chemical telegraph (1846). It is with the last invention that his name is chiefly a ociated, and because of the great impetus it gave to telegraphy he is entitled to the credit of being the pioneer of the modern high speed telegraph.