During May 1850 Bain presented a new automatic telegraph 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.

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 in Austria for a long period, until 1870.

Bain Electro-Chemical Telegraph 1850

The clockwork disk recorder now with a fixed writing arm, left,

married with a manual rotary sender using punched tape, right.

After being demonstrated in France it was shown at the Great Exhibition

in London during 1851

• 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

The Great Exhibition occupied much of Bain’s time and energy during 1851, in preparation for the event and in attending the display stand between May 1 and October 15. The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park proved not to be the best venue to show his electric clocks, movement of the insubstantial floor boards of the galleries caused their pendulums to quiver. The ‘Morning Chronicle’ reported that of the four he displayed on the first Wednesday, two had stopped by Saturday, and the other two “varied by some minutes” for this reason.

When Alexander Bain returned to London in 1850, he was, apparently, comfortably off, living with his wife, Matilda, in a large house in Hammersmith, a small, smart suburb of London, on the river Thames, with five servants and a teacher for their six children. One of his neighbours there was Charles Wheatstone. His chemical telegraph patent in America was validated, despite the attacks of the Morse Syndicate; over two thousand miles of circuits had been built using his rights. 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.

Previously, in 1848, the Electric Telegraph Company had returned his patent rights to the electric clock, all their stock and the implements for their manufacture. Bain had neglected his “first child” for the telegraph, now with the pressure of the Great Exhibition past he took up electric timekeeping once gain and, on April 30, 1852 he opened a fine shop, with showrooms and manufactory, at 43 Old Bond Street, Mayfair, London, large premises lately occupied by Henry and William Powell, coach-builders, four doors from Piccadilly, to retail his clocks. It was, interestingly, just a few minutes’ walk from Wheatstone Brothers, musical instrument makers, at 20 Conduit Street, Mayfair.

However, all was not what it seemed. Henry Fletcher, a bookseller, had advertised in the London newspapers in October 1851 that he had money to invest in a new business. Bain borrowed £1,000 from Fletcher, his life savings, offering 5% interest and a salary of £250 a year to be his Manager. Andrew Bonar, an Edinburgh merchant of some means living in London, was also induced to advance Bain £1,770 at 5% and £300 a year “for his influence in favour of ‘the clocks’” in 1852.

A handsome illustrated pamphlet, ‘A Short History of the Electric Clocks’ was published by Chapman & Hall in concert with the new venture. The author was Alexander Bain, “the Patentee.” Advertisements announcing the opening of the showroom were taken in the London papers, ‘The Times’, the ‘Daily News’ and the ‘Morning Chronicle’.

Bain electric clocks 1852

Powered by a telluric or earth battery, the one on the left a master clock 

driving several small companion pieces

“Mr Bain, the patentee, showrooms, 43 Old Bond Street, are open to the public, an extensive assortment of these Clocks, at all prices from £5, may be seen in motion. They require neither winding nor attendance of any kind and keep very accurate time. By one pendulum, power is obtained to work several Clocks, thereby ensuring perfect uniformity of time throughout the largest house.”

Advertisement, June 1852

Bain electric companion clocks 1852

A selection of small electric clocks that Bain sold from his short-lived Bond Street shop, each one precisely synchronised with a tall master clock

Utterly Reckless

Yet on December 3, 1852 Alexander Bain, electric clock maker, was declared bankrupt, owing £12,422 to unsecured creditors with just £932 in assets.

When his accounts were examined, they ran only from January 1, 1852 until December 3, 1852, and eventually balanced it was revealed that in January 1852 Bain was already £4,393 in debt, and was relying entirely on credit for his existence. He claimed as assets the residual rights to his several patents in Europe, £16,300, and property in America, comprising clocks and telegraph models, half of the chemical patent right and stock in telegraph companies, £22,350. Even before he left for America in 1848 the money he received from the Electric Telegraph Company in 1846 for the British rights to the chemical telegraph, £10,000, had all gone – mainly to pay his legal and parliamentary costs in fighting the same company.  The values put on the European rights and American assets were illusory. In the weeks previous Bain had despatched his solicitor to New York in an attempt to redeem his assets there; he came away with nothing. Marshall Lefferts had already sold his controlling interest in the rights to the Morse Syndicate rendering Bain’s portion, claimed as half, worthless.

The trading accounts of the shop were disastrous. Cash sales in 1852 were £1,200, profit was £70. Bain’s expenses included £599 for his house, £520 for law costs, £347 for staff wages, and £206 for interest on loans. The sums borrowed exceeded £4,200. Bain had been lavish with other people’s money.

He appeared before the court on December 16, 1852 and several times during the spring of 1853. There were three classes of bankruptcy certificate, the first was granted almost immediately if it came about through unavoidable losses or misfortunes; the third if there were wilful or criminal intent, and was a “stigma for life”; Bain fell into the second class, between the two, although described as “utterly reckless as to the consequences” of his borrowing in mitigation he had given up all he had, his shares and his patents, to his creditors, and there was no fraud or preference in his accounting. He was given a year in April 1853 to co-operate and settle with his deeply suspicious creditors with an allowance of £3 a week from the estate. Bain was finally discharged from bankruptcy on May 11, 1854. Two dividends were eventually paid, 8d in the pound on June 28, 1853, and 11/12d (0.91d) in the pound on December 6, 1859, 3¾ % in all.

His large family were compelled to move from the house by the river Thames at Hammersmith to Westbourne Park Road in slightly less congenial Paddington in 1853. Their story after 1856 is vague, however on August 14 of that year Matilda Bain died at the house of John Finlaison, her elderly brother-in-law and Bain’s former patron, in Richmond, Surrey. What happened subsequently does not reflect well on Alexander Bain. It is not known who cared for their six children between 1856 and 1860, but when Bain left again for America the children, ranging in age between fifteen years and ten, were divided. At least one was lodged in the British Orphan Asylum in Clapham during 1861 and died in 1865. With the exception of one daughter, a teacher in India, the others vanish from history; none were part of Alexander Bain’s later life.