Alexander Hastie Millar

“ In a letter to the 'Northern Warder,' a Dundee newspaper, on 26 June 1845, Lindsay proposed a transatlantic telegraph, by means of uninsulated copper wire, and suggested that the wire joints might be welded by electricity. In 1853 he announced, in a lecture on telegraphy delivered in Dundee on 15 March, that by establishing a battery on one side of the Atlantic and a receiver on the other, a current could be passed through the ocean to America without wires. ”

“ Simpson had a long and honourable connection with freemasonry, which he often found useful in his travels. He was initiated in 1871, was one of the first members of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge in 1886, and two years afterwards became worshipful master, contributing many valuable papers to the 'Transactions.' His last combined literary and artistic work was a volume entitled 'Glasgow in the Forties,' in which he reproduced many of his sketches of Glasgow street architecture, made about 1848, and wrote descriptive letterpress. ”

“ In 1835 Simpson entered an architect's office in Glasgow, and there his taste for art was developed, and two years afterwards he was apprenticed to the firm of Allan & Ferguson, lithographers, Glasgow. ”