job as manager, causing Wheatstone to resign. Bain's next invention was for Telegraphic Clocks. They were developed and constructed between 1837 and 1840. They were put into practical application in 1840 and a patent applied for. The patent received was dated 11 January 1841, and was in the names of John Barwise, chronometer maker, and Alexander Bain, mechanic. It describes his master electric clock which uses a pendulum kept moving by electromagnetic impulses that were also sent to other Telegraphic Clocks in a system of electric clocks located at various points around the world. The master clock could be located at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. or at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, England. The master clock with these impulses would cause all the clocks in the system to beat synchronously together as if one clock. Bain improved on this later in 1843 patents that included a proposal to derive the required electricity from an "earth battery", which consisted of plates of zinc and copper buried in the ground about apart in drained moist earth. He caused the sun itself to set his Telegraphic Clocks to Greenwich Mean Time. In the meridian was placed a powerful glass lens and behind it a Thermo-Electric pile which made an electric battery. The lens was placed in such a manner that as soon as the sun came on the meridian of the place its rays were made to strike powerfully the end of the electric battery, which then generated an electric current pulse. That pulse was then sent out to all the clocks in the system and set them all instantaneously to the true Greenwich Mean Time. In December 1841, Bain in conjunction with Lieutenant Thomas Wright RN, patented a method for helping to control railway trains with the use of electricity. The most significant idea incorporated in the patent was his plan for inverting the needle telegraph earlier developed by Ampere, Wheatstone and others: instead of making signals by a pivoted magnetic needle under the influence of an electromagnet, he made them by suspending a movable coil between the poles of a fixed magnet. A similar concept appears in Sir William Thomson's siphon recorder. Bain also proposed to make the coil record messages by printing them, an idea he developed further in a subsequent patent. Bain's telegraph was first used in December 1845 on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway which