Alexander Bain: The Caithness Crofter's Son Who Invented the World's First Fax Machine — in 1843

The Problem Bain Solved: Telegraphy on the Cusp

To understand why Bain's invention mattered, picture the state of electrical communication in the late 1830s. In 1837 two rival systems appeared almost simultaneously. In Britain, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented their electric telegraph on 12 June 1837, using electric currents to swing magnetic needles that pointed to letters on a board. In America, Samuel F. B. Morse independently developed a recording telegraph and, with Alfred Vail, the dot-and-dash code that bears his name; on 24 May 1844 Morse sent his famous first message — "What hath God wrought" — from Washington to Baltimore.

These systems were revolutionary, but limited. They could transmit only coded signals — needle deflections or dots and dashes — which required trained operators at both ends to encode and decode every message. They could not send a document, a drawing, a signature, or a picture. The compelling next question was obvious: if electricity could carry a coded pulse, could it carry the pattern of light and dark that makes up a written page? Could a document be reproduced at a distance? It was Bain, the Caithness clockmaker, who answered first.

How Bain's Copying Telegraph Worked

Bain's conceptual leap was the idea of scanning. On 27 May 1843 he was granted British Patent No. 9745 — the document now recognised as the ancestor of the fax machine. Its title is dense — "improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces, and in electric printing, and signal telegraphs" — but its mechanism, explained simply, looks like this.

At the transmitting end

A message composed of raised metal type — identical to printer's type — was mounted on a flat surface. A stylus mounted on a swinging pendulum passed across the surface, line by line. When the stylus touched raised metal, it completed an electrical circuit; when it passed over a gap, the circuit broke. The result was a stream of electrical pulses corresponding exactly to the light and dark of the original.

At the receiving end

A second stylus swung in step across paper soaked in a chemical solution. When a pulse arrived, the current caused a chemical reaction that left a dark mark on the paper; where no pulse arrived, the paper stayed blank. Point by point, line by line, the original was rebuilt as a copy at the far end.

The crucial trick: synchronisation

The two pendulums had to swing in exact unison, or the copy would be gibberish — and here Bain's genius as a clockmaker came into play. He proposed using his own electric clock mechanism to keep the transmitting and receiving pendulums in step. As both original and copy were slowly lowered after each swing, the whole surface was scanned. In Bain's own patent words, "a copy of any other surface composed of conducting and non-conducting materials can be taken by these means." That sentence is the conceptual birth certificate of the fax machine.

"A copy of any other surface composed of conducting and non-conducting materials can be taken by these means."

The World's First Fax Machine

This is, in principle, exactly what a fax machine does: scan, transmit, reconstruct. The image quality of Bain's experimental apparatus was poor, and synchronisation over long distances remained a practical headache. Bain himself probably never performed a true long-distance image transmission. But his patent made facsimile feasible, and contained every essential idea. In April 1844 The Times described him as "a most imaginative and meritorious inventor."

In a separate strand of work, Bain — with the Perthshire chemistry lecturer Robert Smith — patented the chemical telegraph on 12 December 1846. This was a faster text telegraph: instead of moving heavy mechanical parts, the signal current itself made a mark directly on chemically treated paper (a strip soaked in a solution that turned blue when current passed). With no mechanical inertia to overcome, it was dramatically faster than Morse's instrument. A Continental speed trial between Paris and Lille is traditionally said to have clocked 282 words in 52 seconds, against Morse's roughly 40 words per minute — figures that should be treated as nineteenth-century biography rather than primary measurement.

Patent Battles: Wheatstone, Morse and Bain

Bain's career was defined as much by who he fought as by what he built. The pattern was always the same: the inventive genius, lacking money and connections, cheated of his proper reward.

Wheatstone vs Bain

The first and most notorious clash was with Sir Charles Wheatstone. In 1840 Bain demonstrated his electric-clock models to Wheatstone, who — when asked his opinion — reportedly said, "Oh, I shouldn't bother to develop these things any further! There's no future in them." Three months later, Wheatstone demonstrated an electric clock to the Royal Society as his own invention. But Bain had already applied for his patent (granted, with Barwise, in January 1841). Wheatstone tried to block him and failed.

The dispute came to a head when Wheatstone and Cooke's Electric Telegraph Company sought an Act of Parliament. Bain objected, citing his 1843 patent. After both Bain and Cooke gave evidence, a House of Lords committee found in Bain's favour: the company paid him £7,500 in compensation plus £2,500 for the use of his printing-telegraph patents, agreed to manufacture and market his clocks with a profit share, and made him a shareholder. Wheatstone resigned in fury. For once, the Highland clockmaker had won.

Morse vs Bain

The second great battle, against Samuel Morse, ended very differently. When Bain went to the United States in 1848 to exploit the American railway boom, he applied for a US patent on his chemical telegraph. Morse opposed it on grounds of priority. Bain appealed to the federal court, which accepted the priority of his British patent and overruled the Patent Office; he and Smith received their US patent in October 1849. For a time his chemical telegraph was licensed to Henry O'Reilly and ran on more than 2,000 route miles of American lines.

But Morse struck again, obtaining an injunction in 1851 for infringement of his sweepingly broad 1840 patent. The case reached the US Supreme Court — O'Reilly v. Morse (1853) — which ruled for Morse, though, as scant comfort to Bain, it rejected Morse's broadest, unimplemented claims. That distinction between a broad idea and a specific implementation remains a landmark of patent law to this day. Bain returned to Britain financially ruined.

There was a third quarrel, too. While Bain was in America, the London writer-inventor Frederick Bakewell — who had seen Bain's copying-telegraph schematic — publicly announced an "image telegraph" in The Spectator in April 1848 as his own. Bain returned to find his idea claimed by another, and a public squabble in the periodicals followed.

How the World's First Fax Machine Worked — Step by Step

1. 1. Original document. The message — handwriting, printing or an image — was fixed to the transmitter as raised metal type or a conducting plate.
2. 2. Scanning the image. A fine metal stylus, driven by a swinging pendulum, traced each line of the document, advanced downward a fraction at a time, and converted light and dark into a stream of electrical pulses.
3. 3. Electric current sent. The pulses travelled along ordinary telegraph wires — Bain used the same lines being strung across Britain in the 1840s — to a distant receiving station.
4. 4. Synchronised receiver. A precisely timed pendulum and clockwork mechanism — Bain's electric clock — kept the receiver scanning in perfect synchronism with the transmitter, so every point of the image was reproduced in the correct place.
5. 5. Reproducing the image. The receiving stylus moved across chemically treated paper. When the current arrived, a chemical reaction marked the paper; where no current arrived, the paper stayed blank.
6. 6. An exact copy received. Line by line, the full image was reproduced at the receiving end — an exact facsimile of the original, the world's first true transmitted picture.

From Bain to the Modern Fax

Here a popular myth must be corrected. Many websites claim Bain gave a public demonstration of his chemical telegraph between Edinburgh and London in 1848. There is no scholarly support for this; in 1848 Bain was in fact emigrating to America. The confusion appears to blend his genuine Edinburgh–Glasgow railway telegraph line (built 1845–46, 46 miles long, used to send time from a master clock in Edinburgh to a slave clock in Glasgow) with the year 1848 and with the chemical telegraph's real English deployment on the Electric Telegraph Company's lines.

The genuine line of descent from Bain to the modern fax runs clearly. Frederick Bakewell improved Bain's design in 1848, replacing the swinging pendulums with synchronised rotating cylinders, and demonstrated his version at the Great Exhibition of 1851 — where Bain, too, exhibited and won a medal. The decisive step to commercial reality came from the Italian physicist (and abbé) Giovanni Caselli, whose pantelegraph — a giant machine using a regulating pendulum clock to keep transmitter and receiver in step — entered service as the world's first commercial fax service, between Paris and Lyon, in 1865, eleven years before the telephone. This is confirmed by the IEEE (Bonnier, "A Florentine in Paris: The Caselli pantelegraph and its successors, 1859–1871"). Caselli had patented the pantélégraphe in Europe (No. 2,532, 1861) and the United States (No. 37,563, 1863). Every one of these machines descended from the principle Bain set down in 1843.

The modern fax machine evolved through Caselli (1865), Elisha Gray's "telautograph" (US patent, 1888) and Arthur Korn's photoelectric Bildtelegraph — Korn first transmitted a photograph in 1904, sent a photo of Crown Prince William over 1,800 km on 17 October 1906 using selenium photoelectric cells, and in 1923 successfully transmitted an image of Pope Pius XI across the Atlantic from Rome to Bar Harbor, Maine — through AT&T and RCA's wirephoto systems of the 1920s, and finally the standardised digital fax machines that flooded offices in the 1980s. At the head of that lineage stands Bain.

Legacy in Television and Digital Communications

More profoundly, Bain's concept of breaking an image into scanned lines anticipated television — fellow Scot John Logie Baird and other pioneers used exactly the same raster-scanning idea — and, ultimately, every digital image transmitted across the internet. It was precisely this insight that earned Bain a posthumous Technology & Engineering Emmy, awarded by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences on Friday 8 January 2016 at a Las Vegas ceremony "for inventing the concept of scanning for image transmission"; the statuette is displayed in Kirkintilloch Town Hall.

The fax he fathered is, remarkably, not dead. The technology persists most stubbornly in healthcare — at least 70% of US health-care providers still exchange medical information by fax, according to Steve Posnack of the US Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology — as well as in legal, government and Japanese business sectors. The global fax-services market was valued at USD 3.30 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 4.47 billion by 2030.

Bain was also a pioneer of the automatic telegraph, devising a system that used punched paper tape to send code at high speed — the chemical telegraph was so fast that a human hand could not keep up. The Science Museum credits Bain as "the originator of perforated paper tape used for telegraph purposes". He also patented insulated telegraph cabling, a fire alarm, a marine depth sounder, a ship's log, a current regulator, and a string of domestic gadgets including a spill-proof inkwell and a propelling pencil. Surviving Bain clocks are held by the National Museum of Scotland, the Science Museum in London, and the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum.

Did You Know?

Myth vs Fact

Timeline

1. Oct 1810

   Born in the parish of Watten

   Alexander Bain is born in Caithness, one of thirteen children of John Bain, a tenant crofter, and his wife Isabella; baptised on 22 November 1810.

2. c.1830

   Apprenticed in Wick

   Apprenticed around age twenty to John Sellar, clockmaker of Wick. Attends a public lecture in Thurso — 'Light, Heat and the Electric Fluid' — and is captivated by electromagnetism.

3. 1837

   London — Clerkenwell

   Moves to London and works as a journeyman clockmaker in Clerkenwell. Haunts the Polytechnic Institution and Adelaide Gallery and sets up his own workshop in Hanover Street.

4. Jan 1841

   First electric clock patent

   Bain and John Barwise are granted the first patent for an electromagnetically maintained pendulum clock — the world's first electric clock.

5. 27 May 1843

   The copying telegraph

   British Patent No. 9745: the world's first facsimile transmission system. Scans metal type with a pendulum stylus and reproduces it on chemically treated paper.

6. 1845–46

   Edinburgh–Glasgow telegraph

   Builds a 46-mile railway telegraph line for the North British Railway, sending a master-clock time signal from Edinburgh to a slave clock in Glasgow.

7. 12 Dec 1846

   Chemical telegraph patent

   Patents the chemical telegraph with chemistry lecturer Robert Smith — a current passing through chemically treated tape, with no mechanical inertia to slow it down.

8. 1848

   Emigrates to America

   Sails for the United States to exploit the American railway boom. Bakewell publicly claims an 'image telegraph' in The Spectator in his absence.

9. Oct 1849

   US patent — overruling Morse

   After a federal-court appeal against the Patent Office, Bain and Smith are granted a US patent for the chemical telegraph despite Morse's priority objection.

10. 1851

    Great Exhibition medal

    Wins a medal at the Great Exhibition, where Bakewell shows his rotating-cylinder 'image telegraph' descended from Bain's design.

11. 1853

    O'Reilly v. Morse

    The US Supreme Court rules for Morse on injunction, but rejects his broadest unimplemented claims — a landmark distinction in patent law. Bain returns to Britain financially ruined.

12. 1865

    Caselli's pantelegraph

    Giovanni Caselli's pantelegraph — built on Bain's scanning principle — runs the world's first commercial fax service between Paris and Lyon.

13. 1873

    Civil List pension

    After lobbying by Lord Kelvin, Sir William Siemens and Latimer Clark, Gladstone's government grants Bain a Civil List pension of £80 a year.

14. 2 Jan 1877

    Death in Kirkintilloch

    Dies at the Broomhill Home for Incurables, Kirkintilloch, and is buried in the Old Aisle Cemetery. The headstone reads, 'He thought above himself and also helped to secure a great and better world.'

15. 8 Jan 2016

    Posthumous Emmy

    The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences awards Bain a Technology & Engineering Emmy in Las Vegas 'for inventing the concept of scanning for image transmission.' The statuette is displayed in Kirkintilloch Town Hall.

Lasting Legacy

Bain himself enjoyed little of the glory his ideas would create. After his American ruin he was reduced to repairing clocks for a living in Glasgow. One of his customers was the University's William Thomson — Lord Kelvin — who recognised both Bain's genius and his plight. Through Thomson, Sir William Siemens, Latimer Clark and others, the Gladstone government granted Bain a Civil List pension of £80 a year from 1873, with a further £150 grant from the Royal Society. After a stroke in 1876, Thomson again helped secure him a place in the Broomhill Home for Incurables in Kirkintilloch, where Bain died on 2 January 1877. He is buried in the Old Aisle (Auld Aisle) Cemetery, Kirkintilloch.

Scotland remembers him. A granite memorial erected by public subscription in 1943 stands outside Watten village hall; Bain Place in Watten, a commemorative plaque at his apprenticeship site in Wick, and a plaque at his former Edinburgh workshop in Hanover Street all bear his name, as do the BT Heritage "Alexander Bain House" buildings in Glasgow and Thurso, and a Wetherspoon pub in Wick.

The crofter's son from Caithness invented, patented and lost more than most engineers of his generation managed to dream. Yet every time a hospital sends a referral by fax, a parliament transmits a signed document, a phone scans a passport, a probe sends an image back from a moon, or a child shares a photograph across the world, the principle in motion is his: scan it, send it, rebuild it. From the parish of Watten, to Las Vegas in 2016, to a billion screens lit by his idea — that is the legacy of Alexander Bain.

Related Scottish Inventions

• The First Electric Clock
  Bain's 1841 patent — the master-and-slave principle behind every networked clock since.
• The Chemical Telegraph
  Bain's faster 1846 text telegraph — chemically printed, far quicker than Morse.
• John Logie Baird — Television
  The same raster-scanning principle Bain set down in 1843 made television possible.
• Kinetograph & Kinetoscope
  W. K. L. Dickson's camera and viewer — moving pictures from a Scot in New Jersey.
• Maxwell's Equations
  The Edinburgh physicist who proved light, electricity and magnetism were one.
• The Telephone
  Alexander Graham Bell put the voice on the wire — 33 years after Bain put the image on it.
• The Postage Stamp
  Dundee's James Chalmers and the adhesive stamp that rebuilt the postal system.
• First Colour Photograph
  James Clerk Maxwell's 1861 three-colour separation — the ancestor of every colour image.
• The Carbon Brush
  George Forbes's invention that made practical electric generators and motors possible.
• The Vacuum Flask
  Sir James Dewar's 1892 invention — the dewar that became the Thermos.

Further Reading

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography — entry on Alexander Bain (1810–1877).
• National Museum of Scotland — surviving Bain electric clocks and Scottish telegraph collections.
• Science Museum, London — Bain telegraph apparatus and the history of perforated paper tape.
• British Library — original copy of British Patent No. 9745 (27 May 1843).
• IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Bonnier, "A Florentine in Paris: The Caselli pantelegraph and its successors, 1859–1871".
• Royal Society — papers and pension records relating to Alexander Bain.
• National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences — 2016 Technology & Engineering Emmy citation: "for inventing the concept of scanning for image transmission".
• BT Heritage Archives — telegraph history and the legacy of nineteenth-century electrical communication.

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