practical operating electro-mechanical commercially exploited telefax machine, the Pantelegraph, was invented by the Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli. He introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon at least 11 years before the invention of workable telephones. Later life Initially Bain made a considerable sum from his inventions but lost his wealth in poor investments. In 1873, Sir William Thomson, Sir William Siemens, Latimer Clark and others obtained a Civil List pension for Bain from Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone of £80 per year and the Royal Society gave him £150. Death and legacy Bain died on 2 January 1877, and was interred in the Auld Aisle Cemetery, Kirkintilloch. His tombstone was restored in 1959 because it was in a state of disrepair. The headstone had a fallacious date of death (1876) which was corrected to 1877. JD Wetherspoon's pub in Wick, close to where Alexander Bain served his apprenticeship, is now named 'The Alexander Bain' after the inventor. Also, as a tribute to his inventions, the main British Telecom building in Glasgow is named Alexander Bain House. One of the earliest examples of an electrically impulsed pendulum clock is on display at the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum. In 2016, he was posthumously awarded the Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for his pioneering work transmitting images electrically. A statuette award is on display in Kirkintilloch Town Hall. Patents References Sources Further reading Bain, Alexander, A History of Electric Clocks, London: Chapman and Hall, 1852 Gunn, Robert P., Alexander Bain of Watten. Genius of the North, Wick 1976 Hackmann, W. D., Alexander Bain's Short History of the Electric Clock (1852), London: Turner & Devereux 1973. Burns, R. W., Engineering Science and Education Journal, Vol 2, No2, April 1993. Aked, C. K., Alexander Bain. The father of electric horology, Antiquarian Horology December, 1974. Hope-Jones, F', Electrical Timekeeping. London: NAG Press, 1940. Kieve J, The Electric Telegraph. A Social and Economic History, Newton Abbot, Devon: David & Charles, 1973. Nicholas J. Wade, "The Bains of Psychology". Perception, 2001, volume 30, pages 777 - 783 DOI 10.1068/p3007ed External links Significant Scots: Alexander Bain, electricscotland.com. Alexander Bain 1811-1877, visitdunkeld.com. History of the Fax Machine, inventors.about.com. Scottish inventors 1810 births 1877 deaths Scottish clockmakers Scottish electrical engineers People from Caithness Technicians 19th-century Scottish people People from Kirkintilloch