Scottish inventions and discoveries

Road transport innovations

• Macadamised roads : John Loudon McAdam
• The pedal bicycle: Attributed to both Kirkpatrick Macmillan and Thomas McCall
• The pneumatic tyre: Robert William Thomson and John Boyd Dunlop
• The overhead valve engine: David Dunbar Buick

  Civil engineering innovations

• Tubular steel: Sir William Fairbairn
• The Falkirk wheel: Initial designs by Nicoll Russell Studios, Architects, RMJM and engineers Binnie, Black, and Veatch
• The patent slip for docking vessels: Thomas Morton
• The Drummond Light: Thomas Drummond
• Canal design: Thomas Telford
• Dock design improvements: John Rennie
• Crane design improvements: James Bremner
• "Trac Rail Transposer", a machine to lay rail track patented in 2005, used by Network Rail in the United Kingdom and the New York City Subway in the United States.

  Aviation innovations

• Aircraft design: Frank Barnwell Establishing the fundamentals of aircraft design at the University of Glasgow.

  Power innovations

• Condensing steam engine improvements: James Watt
• Thermodynamic cycle: William John Macquorn Rankine
• Coal-gas lighting: William Murdoch
• The Stirling heat engine: Rev. Robert Stirling
• Carbon brushes for dynamos: George Forbes
• The Clerk cycle gas engine: Sir Dugald Clerk
• The wave-powered electricity generator: by South African Engineer Stephen Salter in 1977
• The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter : Richard Yemm, 1998

  Shipbuilding innovations

• Europe's first passenger steamboat: Henry Bell
• The first iron-hulled steamship: Sir William Fairbairn
• The first practical screw propeller: Robert Wilson
• Marine engine innovations: James Howden
• John Elder & Charles Randolph

  Military innovations

• Lieutenant-General Sir David Henderson two areas:
• *Field intelligence. Argued for the establishment of the Intelligence Corps. Wrote Field Intelligence: Its Principles and Practice and Reconnaissance on the tactical intelligence of modern warfare during World War I.
• Intelligence: Allan Pinkerton developed the still relevant intelligence techniques of "shadowing" and "assuming a role" in his time as head of the Union Intelligence Service.

  Heavy industry innovations

• Coal mining extraction in the sea on an artificial island by Sir George Bruce of Carnock. Regarded as one of the industrial wonders of the late medieval period.
• Making cast steel from wrought iron: David Mushet
• Wrought iron sash bars for glass houses: John C. Loudon
• The hot blast oven: James Beaumont Neilson
• The steam hammer: James Nasmyth
• Wire rope: Robert Stirling Newall
• Steam engine improvements: William Mcnaught
• The Fairlie, a narrow gauge, double-bogie railway engine: Robert Francis Fairlie
• Cordite - Sir James Dewar, Sir Frederick Abel

  Agricultural innovations

• Threshing machine improvements: James Meikle & Andrew Meikle
• Hollow pipe drainage: Sir Hew Dalrymple, Lord Drummore
• The Scotch plough: James Anderson of Hermiston
• Deanstonisation soil-drainage system: James Smith
• The mechanical reaping machine: Rev. Patrick Bell
• The Fresno scraper: James Porteous
• The Tuley tree shelter: Graham Tuley in 1979

  Communication innovations

• Telephone: Alexander Graham Bell
• Print stereotyping: William Ged
• Roller printing: Thomas Bell
• The adhesive postage stamp and the postmark: claimed by James Chalmers
• The Waverley pen nib innovations thereof: Duncan Cameron The popular "Waverley" was unique in design with a narrow waist and an upturned tip designed to make the ink flow more smoothly on the paper.
• Universal Standard Time: Sir Sandford Fleming
• Light signalling between ships: Admiral Philip H. Colomb
• The underlying principles of Radio - James Clerk Maxwell
• The Kinetoscope, a motion picture camera: devised in 1889 by William Kennedy Dickson
• The teleprinter: Frederick G. Creed
• The British Broadcasting Corporation BBC: John Reith, 1st Baron Reith its founder, first general manager and Director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation
• RADAR: A significant contribution made by Robert Watson-Watt alongside Englishman Henry Tizard and others
• The automated teller machine and Personal Identification Number system - James Goodfellow

  Publishing firsts

• The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica
• The first English textbook on surgery
• The first modern pharmacopaedia, William Cullen. The book became 'Europe's principal text on the classification and treatment of disease'. His ideas survive in the terms nervous energy and neuroses.
• The first postcards and picture postcards in the UK
• The educational foundation of Ophthalmology: Stewart Duke-Elder in his ground breaking work including ‘Textbook of Ophthalmology and fifteen volumes of System of Ophthalmology’

  Culture and the arts

• Scottish National Portrait Gallery, designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson : the world's first purpose-built portrait gallery.

  Fictional characters

• Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, born in Kirriemuir, Angus
• Long John Silver and Jekyll and Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
• John Bull: by John Arbuthnot although seen as a national personification of the United Kingdom in general, and England in particular, the character of John Bull was invented by Arbuthnot in 1712
• James Bond was given a Scottish background by Ian Fleming, himself of Scottish descent, after he was impressed by Sean Connery's performance.

  Scientific innovations

• Logarithms: John Napier
• Modern Economics founded by Adam Smith 'The father of modern economics' with the publication of The Wealth of Nations.
• Modern Sociology: Adam Ferguson ‘The Father of Modern Sociology’ with his work An Essay on the History of Civil Society
• Hypnotism: James Braid the Father of Hypnotherapy
• Tropical medicine: Sir Patrick Manson known as the father of Tropical Medicine
• Modern Geology: James Hutton ‘The Founder of Modern Geology’
• The theory of Uniformitarianism: James Hutton : a fundamental principle of Geology the features of the geologic time takes millions of years.
• The theory of electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell
• The discovery of the Composition of Saturn's Rings James Clerk Maxwell : determined the rings of Saturn were composed of numerous small particles, all independently orbiting the planet. At the time it was generally thought the rings were solid. The Maxwell Ringlet and Maxwell Gap were named in his honor.
• The Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution by James Clerk Maxwell : the basis of the kinetic theory of gases, that speeds of molecules in a gas will change at different temperatures. The original theory first hypothesised by Maxwell and confirmed later in conjunction with Ludwig Boltzmann.
• Popularising the decimal point: John Napier
• The first theory of the Higgs boson by English born Peter Higgs particle-physics theorist at the University of Edinburgh
• The Gregorian telescope: James Gregory
• The discovery of Proxima Centauri, the closest known star to the Sun, by Robert Innes
• One of the earliest measurements of distance to the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest such system outside of the Solar System, by Thomas Henderson
• The discovery of Centaurus A, a well-known starburst galaxy in the constellation of Centaurus, by James Dunlop
• The discovery of the Horsehead Nebula in the constellation of Orion, by Williamina Fleming
• The world's first oil refinery and a process of extracting paraffin from coal laying the foundations for the modern oil industry: James Young
• The identification of the minerals yttrialite, thorogummite, aguilarite and nivenite: by William Niven
• The concept of latent heat by French-born Joseph Black
• Discovering the properties of Carbon dioxide by French-born Joseph Black
• The concept of Heat capacity by French-born Joseph Black
• The pyroscope, atmometer and aethrioscope scientific instruments: Sir John Leslie
• Identifying the nucleus in living cells: Robert Brown
• An early form of the Incandescent light bulb: James Bowman Lindsay
• Colloid chemistry: Thomas Graham
• The kelvin SI unit of temperature by Irishman William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
• Devising the diagramatic system of representing chemical bonds: Alexander Crum Brown
• Criminal fingerprinting: Henry Faulds
• The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay
• The cloud chamber recording of atoms: Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
• The discovery of the Wave of Translation, leading to the modern general theory of solitons by John Scott Russell
• Statistical graphics: William Playfair founder of the first statistical line charts, bar charts, and pie charts in and known as a scientific ‘milestone’ in statistical graphs and data visualization
• The Arithmetic mean density of the Earth: Nevil Maskelyne conducted the Schiehallion experiment conducted at the Scottish mountain of Schiehallion, Perthshire 1774
• The first isolation of methylated sugars, trimethyl and tetramethyl glucose: James Irvine
• Discovery of the Japp–Klingemann reaction: to synthesize hydrazones from β-keto-acids and aryl diazonium salts 1887
• Pioneering work on nutrition and poverty: John Boyd Orr
• Ferrocene synthetic substances: Peter Ludwig Pauson in 1955
• The first cloned mammal : Was conducted in The Roslin Institute research centre in 1996 by English scientists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell.
• The seismometer innovations thereof: James David Forbes
• Metaflex fabric innovations thereof: University of St. Andrews application of the first manufacturing fabrics that manipulate light in bending it around a subject. Before this such light manipulating atoms were fixed on flat hard surfaces. The team at St Andrews are the first to develop the concept to fabric.
• Tractor beam innovations thereof: St. Andrews University the world's first to succeed in creating a functioning Tractor beam that pulls objects on a microscopic level
• Macaulayite: Dr. Jeff Wilson of the Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen.
• Discovery of Catacol whitebeam by Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh : a rare tree endemic and unique to the Isle of Arran in south west Scotland. The trees were confirmed as a distinct species by DNA testing.

Sports innovations

• Australian rules football Scots were prominent with many innovations in the early evolution of the game, including the establishment of the Essendon Football Club by the McCracken family from Ayrshire
• several modern athletics events, i.e. shot put and the hammer throw, derive from Highland Games and earlier 12th century Scotland
• Curling
• Gaelic handball The modern game of handball is first recorded in Scotland in 1427, when King James I an ardent handball player had his men block up a cellar window in his palace courtyard that was interfering with his game.
• Cycling, invention of the pedal-cycle
• Golf
• 1848: Association football's Glasgow rules established at University of Glasgow.
• Ice Hockey, invented by the Scots regiments in Atlantic Canada by playing Shinty on frozen lakes.
• Shinty The history of Shinty as a non-standardised sport pre-dates Scotland the Nation. The rules were standardised in the 19th century by Archibald Chisholm
• Rugby sevens: Ned Haig and David Sanderson
• The Dugout was invented by Aberdeen FC Coach Donald Colman in the 1920s
• The world's first Robot Olympics which took place in Glasgow in 1990.

  Medical innovations

• Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Firstly in 1842 by Robert Mortimer Glover then extended for use on humans by Sir James Young Simpson Initial use of chloroform in dentistry by Francis Brodie Imlach
• The Saline drip by Dr Thomas Latta of Leith in 1831/32
• The hypodermic syringe: Alexander Wood
• Transplant rejection: Professor Thomas Gibson the first medical doctor to understand the relationship between donor graft tissue and host tissue rejection and tissue transplantation by his work on aviation burns victims during World War II.
• First diagnostic applications of an ultrasound scanner: Ian Donald
• Discovery of hypnotism : James Braid
• Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross
• Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce
• Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman
• Discovery of Staphylococcus: Sir Alexander Ogston
• Discovering the Human papillomavirus vaccine Ian Frazer : the second cancer preventing vaccine, and the world's first vaccine designed to prevent a cancer
• Discovering insulin: John J R Macleod with others The discovery led him to be awarded the 1923 Nobel prize in Medicine.
• Penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming
• General anaesthetic - Pioneered by Scotsman James Young Simpson and Englishman John Snow
• The establishment of standardized Ophthalmology University College London: Stewart Duke-Elder a pioneering Ophthalmologist
• The first hospital Radiation therapy unit John Macintyre : to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of injuries and illness at Glasgow Royal Infirmary
• Pioneering of X-ray cinematography by John Macintyre : the first moving real time X-ray image and the first KUB X-ray diagnostic image of a kidney stone in situ
• The Haldane effect a property of hemoglobin first described by John Scott Haldane
• Oxygen Therapy John Scott Haldane : with the publication of ‘The Theraputic Administration of Oxygen Therapy’ beginning the modern era of Oxygen therapy
• Ambulight PDT: light-emitting sticking plaster used in photodynamic therapy for treating non-melanoma skin cancer. Developed by Ambicare Dundee's Ninewells Hospital and St Andrews University.
• Discovering an effective tuberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s
• Primary creator of the artificial kidney
• Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964 The discovery revolutionized the medical management of angina and is considered to be one of the most important contributions to clinical medicine and pharmacology of the 20th century. In 1988 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
• Developing modern asthma therapy based both on bronchodilation and anti-inflammatory steroids : Sir David Jack in 1972
• Glasgow coma scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett
• Glasgow Outcome Scale Bryan J. Jennett & Sir Michael Bond : is a scale so that patients with brain injuries, such as cerebral traumas
• Discovering & Developing anesthetic drug Propofol Dr. John B. Glen : a globally-used surgical anesthetic common in general surgery cases. In 2018 Dr. Glen received a Lasker Award.
• Glasgow Anxiety Scale J.Mindham and C.A Espie
• Glasgow Depression Scale Fiona Cuthill : the first accurate self-report scale to measure the levels of depression in people with learning disabilities
• ECG : Alexander Muirhead. First recording of a human ECG
• The first Decompression tables John Scott Haldane : to calculate the safe return of deep-sea divers to surface atmospheric pressure
• Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering : Strathclyde University A laser and nanoparticle test to detect Meningitis or multiple pathogenic agents at the same time.

  Household innovations

• The television: John Logie Baird
• The refrigerator: William Cullen
• The first electric bread toaster: Alan MacMasters
• The flush toilet: Alexander Cumming
• The vacuum flask: Sir James Dewar
• The first distiller to triple distill Irish whiskey:John Jameson
• The piano footpedal: John Broadwood
• The first automated can-filling machine John West
• The waterproof macintosh: Charles Macintosh
• The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster
• Keiller's marmalade Janet Keiller - The first recipe of rind suspended marmalade or Dundee marmalade produced in Dundee.
• The modern lawnmower: Alexander Shanks
• The Lucifer friction match: Sir Isaac Holden
• The self filling pen: Robert Thomson
• Cotton-reel thread: J & J Clark of Paisley
• Lime cordial: Lauchlan Rose in 1867
• Bovril beef extract: John Lawson Johnston in 1874
• The electric clock: Alexander Bain
• Chemical Telegraph Alexander Bain In England Bain's telegraph was used on the wires of the Electric Telegraph Company to a limited extent, and in 1850 it was used in America.
• Barr's Irn-Bru, soft drink produced by Barr's in Cumbernauld Scotland and exported all around the world. The drink is so widely popular in Scotland that it outsells both American colas Coca-Cola and Pepsi and ranks 3rd most popular drink in the UK with Coca-Cola and Pepsi taking the first two spots.

  Weapons innovations

• The carronade cannon: Robert Melville
• 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
• The Ghillie suit
• The percussion cap: invented by Scottish Presbyterian clergyman Alexander Forsyth

  Miscellaneous innovations

• Boys' Brigade
• Bank of England devised by William Paterson
• Grand Theft Auto: Developed by Scottish game developers DMA Design
• Bank of France devised by John Law
• The industrialisation and modernisation of Japan by Thomas Blake Glover
• Colour photography: the first known permanent colour photograph was taken by James Clerk Maxwell
• Buick Motor Company by David Dunbar Buick
• New York Herald newspaper by James Gordon Bennett, Sr.
• Pinkerton National Detective Agency by Allan Pinkerton
• Forbes magazine by B. C. Forbes
• The establishment of a standardized botanical institute: Isaac Bayley Balfour major reform, development of botanical science, the concept of garden infrastructure therein improving scientific facilities
• London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: founded by Sir Patrick Manson in 1899

  Publications

• Great Scottish Discoveries and Inventions, Bill Fletcher, William W. Fletcher, John Harrold, Drew, 1985, University of California,,
• Great Scottish inventions and discoveries: a concise guide : a selection of Scottish inventions and discoveries made over a period stretching back to the fifteenth century, John Geddes, Northern Books, 1994
• Scottish Inventors, Alistair Fyfe, HarperCollins, 1999,,
• The Scottish invention of America, democracy and human rights: a history of liberty and freedom from the ancient Celts to the New Millennium, Alexander Leslie Klieforth, Robert John Munro, University Press of America, 2004,,
• Philosophical chemistry in the Scottish enlightenment: the doctrines and discoveries of William Cullen and Joseph Black, Arthur L. Donovan