How Scotland Invented the Modern World

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It

Who formed the first modern nation?

Who created the first literate society?
Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism?
= The Scots.Mention of Scotland and the Scots usually conjures up images of kilts, bagpipes, Scotch whisky, and golf. But as historian and author Arthur Herman demonstrates, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland earned the respect of the rest of the world for its crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since.

Arthur Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. He lucidly summarizes the ideas, discoveries, and achievements that made this small country facing on the North Atlantic an inspiration and driving force in world history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond.

Victorian historian John Anthony Froude once proclaimed, “No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world’s history as the Scots have done.” And no one who has taken this incredible historical trek, from the Highland glens and the factories and slums of Glasgow to the California Gold Rush and the search for the source of the Nile, will ever view Scotland and the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again. For this is a story not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world and its consequences.

“The point of this book is that being Scottish turns out to be more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it. . . . This is the story of how the Scots created the basic idea of modernity. It will show how that idea transformed their own culture and society in the eighteenth century, and how they carried it with them wherever they went. Obviously, the Scots did not do everything by themselves: other nations—Germans, French, English, Italians, Russians, and many others—have their place in the making of the modern world. But it is the Scots more than anyone else who have created the lens through which we see the final product. When we gaze out on a contemporary world shaped by technology, capitalism, and modern democracy, and struggle to find our place as individuals in it, we are in effect viewing the world as the Scots did. . . . The story of Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is one of hard-earned triumph and heart-rending tragedy, spilled blood and ruined lives, as well as of great achievement.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_inventions_and_discoveries

Shaun’s Audio Blog – With “ADULT PICTURES”

The Wife!! Yeah! 

 

 

Right, this is ME talking, 15 minutes I rattle on for a bit. BE WARNED I added 200 or so RANDOM pictures with the Audio, some. VERY ADULT THEME!! Been warned.

Apart from that, someone will like it 2 minutes after I post a 15 minute audio blog. I hope you listen. It was just me talking RUBBISH 🙂 I am in AGONY and this is JUST A FUN BLOG.

Don’t like fun, then please DO NOT LISTEN. If anyone likes this before 10 minutes are up, I will name you. 🙂  SENSE OF HUMOUR NEEDED HERE!

Blogger Radio Show……

 

I have to thank one of the many amazing people on here for this one. Rachie @ http://rachieadventures.wordpress.com/

I had this stupid idea of starting a radio show when I was doing sports, decided it would just end up “Vile Radio FM”

Sat all night thinking about “Something” worthwhile to do. I am a trained singer, ex DJ and I am learning the Guitar as many know. So that is something I can do in my own time. But I am seriously now thinking about starting “Word Press Radio” or “Blogger Radio” Something. Skype based, but through a programme I am looking at. So nobody need spend a penny, it’s all free. I host the show with maybe one other person. And people call in through Skype, and we can discuss ANYTHING. Blogs, blog content, a certain blog, a topic of your choosing, life. Love and more. I know I have the voice and bravery to do it.

The only thing is who would call in? I would need a base of people to spread this and it would be slow to start, but over time, this could be something. I create a Skype account for it and people can call in anonymously or who they are on Word Press.

I am going to give this a test run. I know many people I speak to would be too Shy to call in, but I also know a few people who do online Radio on certain nights. I just don’t it that night.

Just an idea, but I will not stop living, I need to do something.

Thoughts Word Press?

I have done a few phone things before: This was about the Soccer story I blogged for a year… I was debating hardened pundits here, experts in the field. Had them for breakfast every time. They couldn’t debate, stupid. I am not saying I am the best radio host on Earth, but I know I can debate and 1000% have fun also.

What you all think?

This was a Scottish Football radio Show, so the Scottish accents will be strong.

But I got a lot 5,000 followers on Twitter on the back of these calls. Nothing special, just a voice…

 

What the Scottish invented..

 

 

Many conversations I have with people on Word Press lead to many saying they have Scottish ancestry, and this is good. Many want to know more about their bloodline, so I am doing a blog on exactly what Scottish people invented throughout the centuries, we are an innovative race. I knew we invented the TV and Radio and the Bike, Lightbulb etc, but this is unreal. Proud I am, aye…

Some of it I did not even know, it is a big list, so here goes

 

Road transport innovations

Macadamised roads (the basis for, but not specifically, tarmac): John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836)

The pedal bicycle: Attributed to both Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1813–1878) and Thomas McCall (1834–1904)

The pneumatic tyre: Robert William Thomson and John Boyd Dunlop (1822–1873)

The overhead valve engine: David Dunbar Buick (1854–1929)

Walkodile a multi-award winning invention by Elaine Stephen MBE, a primary school teacher from Aberdeenshire (launched in 2007)

 

Civil engineering innovations

Tubular steel: Sir William Fairbairn (1789–1874)

The Falkirk wheel: Initial designs by Nicoll Russell Studios, Architects and engineers Binnie Black and Veatch (Opened 2002)

The patent slip for docking vessels: Thomas Morton (1781–1832)

The Drummond Light: Thomas Drummond (1797–1840)

Canal design: Thomas Telford (1757–1834)

Dock design improvements: John Rennie (1761–1821)

Crane design improvements: James Bremner (1784–1856)

 

 

Aviation innovations

Aircraft design: Frank Barnwell (1910) establishing the fundamentals of aircraft design at the University of Glasgow

 

 

Power innovations

Condensing steam engine improvements: James Watt (1736–1819)

Coal-gas lighting: William Murdoch (1754–1839)

The Stirling heat engine: Rev. Robert Stirling (1790–1878)

Carbon brushes for dynamos: George Forbes (1849–1936)

The Clerk cycle gas engine: Sir Dugald Clerk (1854–1932)

The wave-powered electricity generator: by South African Engineer Stephen Salter in 1977

The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter (“red sea snake” wave energy device): Richard Yemm, 1998

 

 

Shipbuilding innovations

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) [citation needed]

Marine engine innovations: James Howden (1832–1913)

John Elder & Charles Randolph (Marine Compound expansion engine)

 

 

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 (1904) and Reconnaissance (1907) on the tactical intelligence of modern warfare during World War I.

Royal Air Force. Considered instrumental in the foundation of the British Royal Air Force.

United States Navy. Created largely by John Paul Jones, who was born in Kirkcudbrightshire.

Special Forces: Founded by Sir David Stirling and other Scottish Royal Marines, the SAS was created in World War Two

In the North Africa campaign to go behind enemy lines to destroy and disrupt the enemy. Since then it has been regarded as the most famous and influential special

Forces that has inspired other countries to form their own special forces too.

 

 

Heavy industry innovations

Coal mining extraction in the sea on an artificial island by Sir George Bruce of Carnock (1575). Regarded as one of the industrial wonders of the late medieval period.

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-bogie railway engine: Robert Francis Fairlie (1831–1885)

Cordite – Sir James Dewar, Sir Frederick Abel (1889)

 

Agricultural innovations

Threshing machine improvements: James Meikle (c.1690-c.1780) & Andrew Meikle (1719–1811)

Hollow pipe drainage: Sir Hew 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)

Roller printing: Thomas Bell (patented 1783)

The adhesive postage stamp and the postmark: James Chalmers (1782–1853)

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 teleprompter: Frederick G. Creed (1871–1957)

The first working television, and colour television; John Logie Baird (1888–1946)

Radar: Robert Watson-Watt (1892–1973)

The underlying principles of Radio – James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)

The automated teller machine and Personal Identification Number system – James Goodfellow (born 1937)

 

Publishing firsts

The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768–81)

The first English textbook on surgery (1597)

The first modern pharmacopaedia, William Cullen (1776). The book became ‘Europe’s principal text on the classification and treatment of disease’. His ideas survive in the terms nervous energy and neuroses (a word that Cullen coined).

The first postcards and picture postcards in the UK

The first eBook from a UK administration (March 2012). Scottish Government publishes ‘Your Scotland, Your Referendum”

 

 

Fictional Characters

Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, born in Kirriemuir, Angus

Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Long John Silver and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

 

Scientific innovations

Logarithms: John Napier (1550–1617)

The theory of electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)

The first theory of the Higgs boson or “God Particle” by Englishman Peter Higgs particle-physics theorist at the University of Edinburgh (1964)

Popularising the decimal point: John Napier (1550–1617) [64]

The world’s first oil refinery and a process of extracting paraffin from coal laying the foundations for the modern oil industry: James Young (1811–1883)

The Gregorian telescope: James Gregory (1638–1675)

The concept of latent heat: Joseph Black (1728–1799) [67]

The pyroscope, atmometer and aethrioscope scientific instruments: Sir John Leslie (1766–1832)

Identifying the nucleus in living cells: Robert Brown (1773–1858)

Hypnotism: James Braid (1795–1860)

Incandescent light bulb: James Bowman Lindsay (1799-1862)

Transplant rejection: Professor Thomas Gibson (1940s) 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.[72]

Colloid chemistry: Thomas Graham (1805–1869)

The kelvin SI unit of temperature: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824–1907)

Devising the diagrammatic system of representing chemical bonds: Alexander Crum Brown (1838–1922)

Criminal fingerprinting: Henry Faulds (1843–1930)

The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay (1852–1916)

The cloud chamber recording of atoms: Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869–1959)

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 and James Huchinson from (1974–1980)

The first cloned mammal (Dolly the Sheep): Was conducted in The Roslin Institute research centre in 1996

The seismometer innovations thereof: James David Forbes

Metaflex fabric innovations thereof: University of St. Andrews (2010) 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 (2013) 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.

 

 

Sports innovations

Main article: Sport in Scotland

Scots have been instrumental in the invention and early development of several sports:

Football (Soccer)

several modern athletics events, i.e. shot put[90] 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 (see Golf in Scotland)

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 (1883)

 

 

Medical innovations

Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Sir James Young Simpson (1811–1870)

The hypodermic syringe: Alexander Wood (1817–1884)

Discovery of hypnotism (November 1841): James Braid (1795–1860)

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)

General anaesthetic – Pioneered by Scotsman James Young Simpson and Englishman John Snow

Ambulight PDT: light-emitting sticking plaster used in photodynamic therapy (PDT) for treating non-melanoma skin cancer. Developed by Ambicare Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital and St Andrews University. (2010)

Discovering an effective tuberculosis 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

Developing modern asthma therapy based both on bronchodilation (salbutamol) and anti-inflammatory steroids (beclomethasone dipropionate) : Sir David Jack in 1972

Glasgow coma scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974)

EKG [Electrocardiography]: Alexander Muirhead (1911)

 

Household innovations

The television John Logie Baird (1923)

The British Broadcasting Corporation BBC: John Reith, 1st Baron Reith (1922) its founder, first general manager and Director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation

The refrigerator: William Cullen (1748)

The first electric bread toaster: Alan MacMasters (1893)

The flush toilet: Alexander Cummings (1775)

The Dewar flask: Sir James Dewar (1847–1932) ]

The first distiller to triple distil Irish whiskey:[113]John Jameson (Whisky distiller)

The piano foot pedal: John Broadwood (1732–1812)

The first automated can-filing machine John West (1809–1888)

The waterproof macintosh: Charles Macintosh (1766–1843)

The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster (1781–1868)

Keiller’s marmalade Janet Keiller (1797) – The first recipe of rind suspended marmalade or Dundee marmalade produced in Dundee.

The modern lawnmower: Alexander Shanks (1801–1845)

The Lucifer friction match: Sir Isaac Holden (1807–1897)

The self filling pen: Robert Thomson (1822–1873)

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 (1840)

Chemical Telegraph (Automatic Telegraphy) Alexander Bain (1846) 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.

 

Weapons innovations

The carronade cannon: Robert Melville (1723–1809)

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 <<HA HA .. devised by William Paterson

Bank of France devised by John Law

The industrialisation and modernisation of Japan by Thomas Blake Glover

Kirin Brewing Company founded by Thomas Blake Glover

Colour photography: the first known permanent colour photograph was taken by James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)

Safe tray invented by Alison Grieve

 

My god I thought my copy and paste function was going to break and my Microsoft word die!!!  That is some list.

If you ever need a good idea, go ask a Scottish Person 🙂

 

Shaun