Sagala's Cafe

Alexander Bain, a Scottish clock and instrument maker, invented the first electrical clock, patented the basics of facsimile, developed chemical telegraph receivers and punch-tapes to speed up telegraph transmission. He was an all-round inventor and technician who later installed the first telegraph lines alongside the railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. A plaque to Alexander Bain in Wick Alexander Bain and his twin sister Margaret were born in October 1811 of humble parents near Watten, between Thurso and Wick in Caithness, at the extreme north of Scotland. Their dad was a crofter, and he had six sisters and six brothers. They grew up in a remote stone cottage at Leanmore, a few miles north of Wick. The vast expanse of peaty countryside has only occasional scattered cottages, and the Bain house, close to a small wood, became a sheep byre, and is now little more than an outline of low stonewalls. In the winter Sandy walked a mile or two to school in Backlass; in the summer h...