A LITTLE-known Scottish inventor who played a pioneering role in developments which would one day lead to television is to posthumously receive a prestigious Emmy award.
Alexander Bain, who died in 1877 and is buried in Kirkintilloch, will be awarded a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) for outstanding achievement in technical or engineering development in recognition of inventing the concept of scanning for image transmission.
Bain's achievements include the invention of the electric clock and important contributions to the electric telegraph. However he was also the inventor of the facsimile machine, which he patented in 1843.
This early form of image transmission introduced the concepts of scan lines, pixels and frame and line synchronisation which are all used in modern television systems and was the first time an image had been beamed from one place to another.
Bain's accomplishments will be recognised at the 67th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas on Friday 8 January.
East Dunbartonshire Council, who maintain Bain's gravestone in the Old Aisle Cemetery in Kirkintilloch, has been chosen as custodian of the award and arrangements are now being made to have the Emmy delivered to Scotland.
Council Leader Rhondda Geekie said, "It is a huge honour to be asked to accept the Technical and Engineering Emmy Award. Without the accomplishments of Alexander Bain we wouldn't have television world-wide.
"Our predecessors in the Town Council of the Burgh of Kirkintilloch, where Bain died and was buried in 1877, publicly noted the importance of the inventions of Bain and pledged in 1959 that this headstone be maintained in perpetuity.
"They added an inscription to the headstone, which seems very fitting when honouring him - 'He thought above himself and also helped to secure a great and better world'."
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