Bain's extant electric clocks come from two stages of development between the 1840s and the 1860s. Examples can be seen in Watten's Village Hall, the National Museum of Scotland, the National Maritime Museum of London, the London Science Museum and the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum. The most rare and interesting mantel clocks are in private hands. One featured in the "Electrifying Time" exhibition in 1977 at the London Science Museum. Bain sometimes found complex and ornate solutions to relatively simple, although not easy to solve problems. The most complex, his mantel clock, worked on an electro-magnetic pull push, pull push for each complete period of swing employing a pendulum with opposing magnetic fields. At a very similar time, Matthäus Hipp constructed a more simple and reliable system which used a simple toggle switch to impulse the pendulum every so often.