Scottish inventions

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John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor of television.

Scottish inventions are objects, processes or techniques which owe their existence either partially or entirely to a person born in Scotland; in some cases, their Scottishness is determined by the fact that they were brought into existence in Scotland (e.g. animal cloning), by non-Scots working in the country. Often, things which are discovered for the first time, are also called "inventions", and in many cases, there is no clear line between the two.

The Scots take enormous pride in the history of Scottish invention. There are many books devoted solely to the subject, as well as scores of websites listing Scottish inventions with varying degrees of exhaustiveness and accuracy.

Since before the Industrial Revolution, Scots have been at the forefront of innovation and discovery across a wide range of spheres: the steam engine, the bicycle, tarmacadam roads, the telephone, television, the transistor, the motion picture, penicillin, electromagnetics, radar, insulin and calculus are only a few of the most significant products of Scottish ingenuity.

The following is a list of inventions or discoveries often held to be in some way Scottish:

Road Transport Innovations

• A steam car (steam engine): William Murdoch (1754-1839)
• Macadam roads: John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836)
• Driving on the left: Determined by a Scottish-inspired Act of Parliament in 1772
• The pedal bicycle: Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1813-1878)
• The pneumatic tyre: Robert William Thomson (1822-1873) and John Boyd Dunlop (1840-1921)
• The overhead valve engine: David Dunbar Buick (1854-1929)
• The speedometer: Sir Keith Elphinstone (1864-1944)
• The motor lorry: John Yule in 1870
• The steam tricycle: Andrew Lawson in 1895

Civil Engineering Innovations

Bridges

• Bridge design: Sir William Arrol (1838-1913), Thomas Telford (1757-1834) & John Rennie (1761-1821)
• Suspension bridge improvements: Sir Samuel Brown (1776-1852)
• Tubular steel: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)

Canals & Docks

• Falkirk Wheel: ??? (Opened 2002)
• Canal design: Thomas Telford (1757-1834)
• Dock design: John Rennie (1761-1821)
• The patent slip for docking vessels: Thomas Morton (1781-1832)
• Crane design: James Bremner (1784-1856)

Lighthouses

• Lighthouse design: Robert Stevenson (1772-1850)
• The Drummond Light: Thomas Drummond (1797-1840)

Power Innovations

• Steam engine improvements: James Watt (1736-1819)
• Coal-gas lighting: William Murdock (1754-1839)
• The Stirling heat engine: Rev. Robert Stirling (1790-1878)
• Electro-magnetic innovations: James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79)
• Carbon brushes for dynamos: George Forbes (1849-1936)
• The Clark cycle gas engine: Sir Dugald Clark (1854-1932)
• Wireless transformer improvements: Sir James Swinburne (1858-1958)
• Cloud chamber recording of atoms: Charles T. R. Wilson (1869-1959)
• Wave-powered electricity generator: Stephen Salter in 1977

Shipbuilding Innovations

• The steamship paddle wheel: Patrick Miller (1731-1815)
• The steam boat: William Symington (1763-1831)
• Europe's first passenger steamboat: Henry Bell (1767-1830)
• The first iron-hulled steamship: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)
• The first practical screw propeller: Robert Wilson (1803-1882)
• Marine engine innovations: James Howden (1832-1913)

Other Scottish shipbuilding firsts:

• The first all-steel ship
• The first steel ship to cross the Atlantic
• The first paddle steamer to cross the Atlantic
• The first ship to cross the Atlantic in less than a week
• The first all-welded ship
• The first merchant ship to run on oil
• The first set of triple-expansion engines for a twin-screw steamer
• The first ship to be fitted with two engines
• The first steam whaler

Heavy Industry Innovations

• The carronade cannon: Robert Melville (1723-1809)
• Making cast steel from wrought iron: David Mushet (1772-1847)
• Wrought iron sash bars for glass houses: John C. Loudon (1783-1865)
• The hot blast oven: James Beaumont Neilson (1792-1865)
• The steam hammer: James Nasmyth (1808-1890)
• Wire rope: Robert Stirling Newall (1812-1889)
• Steam engine improvements: William Mcnaught (1831-1881)
• The Fairlie, a Narrow gauge, double-bogey railway engine: Robert Francis Fairlie (1831-1885)

Agricultural Innovations

• Threshing machine improvements: James Meikle (c.1690-c.1780) & Andrew Meikle (1719-1811)
• Hollow pipe drainage: Sir Hugh Dalrymple, Lord Drummore (1700-1753)
• The Scotch Plough: James Anderson of Hermiston (1739-1808)
• Deanstonisation soil-drainage system: James Smith (1789-1850)
• The mechanical reaping machine: Rev. Patrick Bell (1799-1869)
• The Fresno Scraper: James Porteous (1848-1922)
• The Tuley tree shelter: Graham Tuley in 1979

Communication Innovations

• Print stereotyping: William Ged (1690-1749)
• The balloon post: John Anderson (1726-1796)
• The adhesive postage stamp and the postmark: James Chalmers (1782-1853)
• The post office
• The mail-van service
• Universal Standard Time: Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915)
• Light signalling between ships: Admiral Philip H. Colomb (1831-1899)
• The telephone: Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
• The teleprinter: Frederick G. Creed (1871-1957)
• The television: John Logie Baird (1888-1946)
• Radar: Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973)

Some Scottish publishing firsts:

• The first book translated from English into a foreign language
• The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768-81)
• The first English textbook on surgery (1597)
• The first modern pharmacopaedia, the Materia Medica Catalogue (1776)
• The first textbook on Newtonian science
• The first colour newspaper advertisement
• The first postcards and picture postcards in the UK

Scientific innovations

• Logarithms: John Napier (1550-1617)
• Popularising the decimal point: John Napier (1550-1617)
• The Gregorian telescope: James Gregory (1638-1675)
• The concept of latent heat: Joseph Black (1728-1799)
• The pyroscope, atmometer and aethrioscope scientific instruments: Sir John Leslie (1766-1832)
• Identifying the nucleus in living cells: Robert Browen (1773-1858)
• Hypnosis: James Braid (1795-1860)
• Colloid chemistry: Thomas Graham (1805-1869)
• The kelvin SI unit of temperature: William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
• Devising the diagramatic system of representing chemical bonds: Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922)
• Criminal fingerprinting: Henry Faulds (1843-1930)
• The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916)
• Pioneering work on nutrition and poverty: John Boyd Orr (1880-1971)
• The ultrasound scanner: Ian Donald (1910-1987)
• Ferrocene synthetic substances: Peter Ludwig Pauson in 1955
• The MRI body scanner: John Mallard in 1980
• The first cloned mammal (Dolly the Sheep): The Roslin Institute research centre in 1996

Medical Innovations

• Devising the cure for scurvy: James Lind (1716-1794)
• Discovering quinine as the cure for malaria: George Cleghorn (1716-1794)
• Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia: Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870)
• The hypodermic syringe: Alexander Wood (1817-1884)
• Pioneering the use of antiseptics: Joseph Lister (1827-1912)
• Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932)
• Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce (1855-1931)
• Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman (1865-1926)
• Discovering insulin: John J R Macleod (1876-1935) with others
• Penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)
• Discovering an effective tuberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s
• Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964
• Glasgow Coma Scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974)

Household Innovations

• The Dewar Flask: Sir James Dewar (1847-1932)
• The piano with footpedals: John Broadwood (1732-1812)
• The waterproof macintosh: Charles Macintosh (1766-1843)
• Marmalade: James Keiller (1775-1839)
• The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster (1781-1868)
• The modern lawnmower: Alexander Shanks (1801-1845)
• The Lucifer friction match: Sir Isaac Holden (1807-1897)
• Paraffin: James Young (1811-1883)
• The fountain pen: Robert Thomson (1822-1873)
• Cotton-reel thread: J & J Clark of Paisley
• Marmalade with peel: James Robertson in 1850
• Cornflour: John Polson in 1854
• Lime Cordial: Lachlan Rose in 1867
• Bovril beef extract: John Lawson Johnston in 1874

See also

• English inventions

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