Bowman Lindsay was a country lad born at Carmyllie,near Dundee who trained as a linen weaver.
His family sacrificed to allow him to study Latin, Greek, Astronomy, Divinity and Mathematics, especially gifted in the later subject, at St Andrews University.
Thereafter he made Dundee his home town as a teacher of languages. For more than twenty five years he laboured at the compilation of his Pentecontaglossal Dictionary in eighty languages. By adding correlatives from remote dialects he brought it up to one hundred and seven.
He experimented with electricity and in 1835 demonstrated in public "a constant light". In 1854 JBL sent wireless messages across the River Tay using large immersed copper plates a distance of two miles, observed as the deflection of a needle and took out a patent "Telegraphing Without Wires", This experiment was sucessfully replicated by Dundee Amateur Radio Club across the dock at Discovery Point as part of the Bowman Lindsay 1999 Bicentenary Celebrations. Like many other pioneers his contribution to the advancement of science was acknowledged long after his death.
Mr J J Fahie,the historian,author of "A History of Wireless Telegraphy 1838 - 1899 claims him as 'The father of Electric Lighting".
Sir William H Preece,Chief Engineer of the Post Office said at the 1901 unveiling of his tombstone JBL was "a self-made philospher,an Arch-Priest of Science,one of those who might be called a prescient prophet,for he indicated long,long before they took place many valuable applications of science". A reference to JBL's prediction of welding by electricity and submarine trans-Atlantic cables, He is quoted on his gravestone....
THE ELECTRIC LIGHT...."The light is intensely bright and be increased without limit.Wheels may be turned by electricity,and small weights raised over pulleys.Houses and towns will in a short time be lighted by electricity instead of gas and heated by it instead of coal,and machinery will be worked by it instead of steam". 11th April 1834 "Its light is incapable of combustion. it will blaze with undiminished lustre amidst tempests of wind and rain; and being capable of surpassing all lights in splendour,it will be used for lighthouses and telegraphs. The present generation may yet have it burning and enlightening their streets" 28th October 1835.
Senator Guglielmo Marconi said in 1925 "Bowman Lindsay must go down to posterity as that of the first man who thoroughly believed in the possibility and utility of long distance wireless telegraphy. He worked patiently at this problem,and first found a solution which nearer to practical realisation than many were inclined to admit".
In 1835 he succeeded in obtaining a constant electric light (more than 40 years before the Edison and Swan patents) by which he wrote a letter to the Dundee Advertiser in October of that year, accurately outlining some of the impact on society that would be brought about by electric lighting, electric power and electric telegraphy.
Penury and an obsession for compiling his "Pentecostaglossal Dictionary" seem to have diverted his attention from developing the light any further.
