Road Transport

A gas powered items (gas mask) : James Gregory (1638-1675)

A steam car (steam engine): William Murdoch (1754-1839)

Macadam roads: John Loudon Macadam (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 and John Boyd Dunlop (1822-1873)

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

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

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)

Lighthouse design: Robert Stevenson (1772-1850)

The Drummond Light: Thomas Drummond (1797-1840)

Power

Condensing 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)

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

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

Communications

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 television: John Logie Baird (1888-1946)

Radar: Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973)

Publishing

The first book translated from English into a foreign language

The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1768-81)

The first English textbook on surgery (1597)

The first modern pharmacopoeia, the Materia Medical Catalogue (1776)

The first textbook on Newtonian science

The first colour newspaper advertisement

The first postcards and picture postcards in the UK

Scientific

Logarithms: John Napier (1550-1617)

Popularizing 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 S1 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

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 turberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s

Primary creator of the artificial kidney (Professor Kenneth Lowe - Later Queen's physician in Scotland)

Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964

Glasgow Coma Scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974)

Household

The Dewar Flask: Sir James Dewar (1847-1932)

The piano with foot pedals: John Broadwood (1732-1812)

The waterproof macintosh: Charles MacIntosh (1766-1843)

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

Lime Cordial: Lachlan Rose in 1867

Bovril beef extract: John Lawson Johnston in 1874

The life ring, or personal flotation device: Captain Ward in 1854

Weapons

The Ferguson rifle: Patrick Ferguson in 1770 or 1776

The Lee bolt system as used in the Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield series rifles: James Paris Lee

Rev. Alexander John Forsyth of Belhelvie (just north of Aberdeen) who, in 1807 invented the percussion cap for guns, thus doing away with the need for using loose gunpowder etc. which, of course, got wet in the rain.

Economist Adam Smith; Smith was born in 1723, hailing from Kirkcaldy, a Scottish town north of Edinburgh; the 18th century Scot considered to be the father of modern economics; Smith's ``An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which argued that minimal government interference in commerce would promote human welfare and alleviate poverty, was published in 1776. He is the first Scotsman to appear on the central bank's currency in England, replacing Elgar's image in the next few years on as many as 1 billion notes.



List taken from http://www.scottish-crafts.co.uk/history/inventors.htm                Back to Top