Three years later it was tried on a
Government line from London to Portsmouth. In 1845, the Electric
Telegraph Company, the pioneer association of its kind, was started, and
Mr. Cooke became a director. Wheatstone and he obtained a considerable
sum for the use of their apparatus. In 1866, Her Majesty conferred the
honour of knighthood on the co-inventors; and in 1871, Cooke was granted
a Civil List pension of L100 a year. His latter years were spent in
seclusion, and he died at Farnham on June 25th, 1879. Outside of
telegraphic circles his name had become well-nigh forgotten.
IV. ALEXANDER BAIN.
Alexander Bain was born of humble parents in the little town of Thurso,
at the extreme north of Scotland, in the year 1811. At the age of
twelve he went to hear a penny lecture on science which, according to
his own account, set him thinking and influenced his whole future.
Learning the art of clockmaking, he went to Edinburgh, and subsequently
removed to London, where he obtained work in Clerkenwell, then famed for
its clocks and watches. His first patent is dated January 11th, 1841,
and is in the name of John Barwise, chronometer maker, and Alexander
Bain, mechanist, Wigmore Street. It describes his electric clock in
which there is an electro-magnetic pendulum, and the electric current is
employed to keep it going instead of springs or weights.
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