I once tried to celebrate Black History Month by writing a long list of Black achievements and contributions to civilization. I bought a new pad of paper (Chinese invention) and got all my pencils ready (English invention). But, alas, there simply wasn’t enough material to fill the first page, let alone a whole pad.
After whizzing through jazz, necklacing, peanut butter, and daggering (a Jamaican dance craze), and one or two other dubious and minor achievements, I simply ran out of steam (Scottish invention—at least in its efficient industrial application).
No doubt this historical deficit is caused by racism, slavery, or "evil White people stealing their science" (Black invention). Whatever the reason, it does little to address the basic problem, that Black History Month lacks a lot of history.
So, instead of focusing on the comparative desert of Black contributions to human civilization, as Leftists would cruelly have us do, I have decided to fill out my long list with the achievements of what Liberals assure me is a practically identical racial group, namely my own ethnic group the Scots.
The Scots or course are just one of many European ethnicities whose enormous contributions to World civilization are quietly stacked up in vast mountain ranges of achievement, with scarcely a whisper of official approval or celebration.
So, without further ado, then, here is my list of Scottish inventions and innovations to set against the great sucking chasm left by focusing solely on Black contributions for a whole month. Strap in as it's going to be an extremely long ride.
1. AC/DC
Probably the biggest rock band ever: Three of the main members, the Young brothers and Bon Scott, were all born in Scotland, before their families emigrated to Australia and changed rock history.
2. Anti Cancer Vaccine
Another Scottish Australian connection. After emigrating to Australia, Dr. Ian Frazer from Glasgow developed the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine that is now used against cervical cancer.
3. Australian Rules Football
Scots, like the McCracken family from Ayrshire who established the Essendon Football Club, were prominent in the evolution of the game and the development of the rules.
4. ATMs
The automated teller machine with a PIN number was invented by James Goodfellow from Paisley in 1966.
5. Bank of England:
The Scottish trader, Sir William Paterson, proposed the idea of the Bank of England and was among the first directors.
6. Bank of France
In 1716, the Scottish financial genius—and mountebank—John Law founded the Banque Générale, the first effective national bank in France.
7. BBC (Sorry!)
Nobody had a greater influence on the BBC than John Reith, its first general manager and director-general, who established the corporation as a national institution before its later decline into political correctness.
8. Beta Blockers
For such an Alpha nation it is appropriate that we should have developed the first beta-blocker drugs. Invented by Sir James W. Black from Lanarkshire, they revolutionized the treatment of angina, winning Sir James the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988.
7. Bicycles
The blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented and rode the first pedal cycle in 1839. He was also involved in the first bicycle crash in 1842, when he was fined for knocking over a pedestrian.
8. Bond
Not only was superspy James Bond created by the Anglo-Scottish writer Ian Fleming, but much of the groundwork for the character was done by another Scottish author John Buchan, whose adventure novels, like “The 39 Steps,” inspired Fleming.
9. Bovril Beef Extract
In 1870 John Lawson Johnston, a Scotsman living in Canada, invented this form of easily bottled “liquid beef” as a convenient war food. The name derives from the Latin for ox, “bovem” and “Vril-ya,” a race of superior beings from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's then-popular novel, “The Coming Race” (1870).
10. Boys' Brigade and Boy Scouts
Like the Hitler Youth, but for Christians. The BB, which was also the forerunner of the Boy Scouts, was founded in Glasgow by Sir William Alexander Smith in 1883. The idea was to develop “Christian manliness” by the use of military discipline and order, gymnastics, camps, religious services, and classes. Hitler later pinched this idea for his own youth organization, the cad!
11. The British Raj
After the Act of Union in 1707, Scots flooded into India as soldiers, traders, engineers, missionaries, planters, teachers, and governors. According to historian Niall Ferguson, the East India Company was “at the very least half-Scottish.”
12. Calendars
The oldest known lunar calendar has been found in Scotland at Warren Field, dating back to around 8,000 BC, so, yes, we can now claim that one as well. Sorry Babylonians.
13. Can-filling Machines
John West from Linlithgow emigrated to the USA, where he set up the salmon canning company that bears his name, and invented the first automated can-filling machine.
14. Capitalism
In 1776 Adam Smith published “Wealth of Nations,” essentially the “foundation document” of modern capitalism.
15. Carronades
The carronade was a short, powerful, smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed by the Scottish soldier Robert Melville and made at the Carron Ironworks in Falkirk. Fitted on ships, these gave the Royal Navy a decisive advantage over its rivals in battles like Trafalgar, and ensured British naval dominance during the Napoleonic Wars.
16. Chloroform
After experimenting on himself, Sir James Simpson introduced chloroform as an anaesthetic to ease the pain of childbirth in 1847. Occasionally, it has also served as an unorthodox dating aid.
17. Cloud Chambers
The Scottish physicist Charles Thomson Rees Wilson received the Nobel Prize for his invention of the cloud chamber, a particle detector that played a vital role in experimental particle physics, during the breakthrough period of the 1920s to the 1950s.
18. Colour Photography
The 19th-century Scottish scientist James Maxwell invented the "three-colour method" of colour photography and took the first known colour photograph.
19. Cordite
One of the disadvantages of gunpowder was the large amount of smoke it generated, a particular drawback in naval battles, where smoke on the horizon could give away a ship's position. There were therefore several attempts to invent a relatively smokeless propellant. In 1889 the Scottish chemist and physicist Sir James Dewar invented cordite, which dominated armaments for the following decades, including the vital WWI period.
20. Cloning
The world's first cloned mammal was created in 1996 by a team of experts at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, many of whom were Scottish.
21. Criminal Fingerprinting
Dr. Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon from Ayrshire working in Japan, realised from examining the fingerprints on ancient Japanese pottery that fingerprinting with ink would be an effective way to identify criminals.
22. Curling
The earliest known written reference to this winter sport is 1541, in a document in Paisley Abbey. The oldest club in the world is the Kilsyth Curling Club, which dates back to 1716.
23. Decompression Tables
Vital for divers. The Scottish physiologist John Scott Haldane devised the first decompression table to safely calculate the return of deep-sea divers to surface atmospheric conditions. He also pioneered oxygen therapy and discovered the Haldane Effect, a property of haemoglobin, useful in treating emphysema. (See also Gas Masks.)
24. Electric Clocks
In 1840, Alexander Bain, a clock and instrument maker from Caithness, was the first to invent and patent the electric clock. (See also Fax Machine.)
25. Electrocardiography
The electronic recording of the activity of a human heart was carried out for the first time in 1872 by the Scottish doctor Alexander Muirhead at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London.
26. Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism is a major branch of physics with multiple applications. Before the work of James Clerk Maxwell, electricity and magnetism were thought of as two separate forces, but his seminal 1873 “Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism” showed how the two were part of the same electromagnetic force, leading to enormous advances in physics.
27. Encyclopædia Britannica
The first edition of the famous book of knowledge and precursor of Wikipedia was produced in 1768 by the Edinburgh printers Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell.
28. Fax Machines
Alexander Bain, the inventor of the electric clock, also produced the world's first fax machine in 1846.
29. Flushing Toilets
Alexander Cummings, an Edinburgh watchmaker, was the first to patent a design for a flush toilet, also inventing the, S-trap, which is still in use today, to prevent smells coming out of the sewer.
30. Fresno Scrapers
The Fresno Scraper forms the basis of modern earthmoving scrapers. It was invented in 1883 in Fresno California by James Porteous from Haddington in Scotland.
31. Gas Lighting
Before electric lighting the main source of lighting was coal-gas lighting. This was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in 1792, when he managed to create an even supply of gas by heating coal.
32. Gas Masks
This was developed by the Scottish physiologist, John Scott Haldane, after the Germans started using poison gas in WWI. (See also Decompression Tables.)
33. Incandescent Light Bulbs
This is a light bulb that uses a wire filament heated to a high temperature. Its invention is often attributed to the Englishmen Joseph Swan in 1878, but many years earlier, in 1835, Scottish inventor James Bowman Lindsay had demonstrated a similar device, but failed to patent it.
34. Geology
James Hutton, a native of the rocky city of Edinburgh, created the science of Geology in 1785, when his “Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe” was read to meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
35. Gin and Tonic
In the 18th century, it was discovered that quinine could cure malaria, but even diluted in tonic water, the taste was extremely bitter until George Cleghorn, an Edinburgh doctor started adding gin, creating the quintessential drink of the British Empire.
36. Golf
The first written record of this popular sport goes back to 1457, when King James II unsuccessfully attempted to ban it as a distraction from the important practice of archery.
37. Gospel Singing
Along with Egyptian pyramid building, gospel singing is yet another aspect of non-Black culture that Blacks have attempted to appropriate. However, according to Yale University music professor Willie Ruff, its true roots lie in the Scottish Hebrides, where Gaelic hymns were sung using a call and response technique called "lining out." Hebrideans came into contact with Blacks through the slave trade, whereupon Blacks picked up this technique on which gospel singing is founded.
38. The Historical Novel
Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley,” published in 1814, is credited with being the first historical novel. This and subsequent novels by Scott had an enormous impact on European literature, inspiring the likes of Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, and many German and Russian writers.
39. Hot Blast Ovens
The hot blast oven patented by the Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828 was one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution. Pumping in hot air rather than cold air achieved much greater temperatures and meant that coal could be used instead of coke, greatly increasing the overall efficiency and economy of iron smelting.
40. Hypnotism
The Kinross-born surgeon James Braid is known as "The Father of Modern Hypnotism," turning it from a parlour amusement to a useful medical technique and therapy to treat a wide range of ailments.
41. Hypodermic Syringes
Basing his idea on the sting of a bee, the Edinburgh-based physician Alexander Wood invented the hypodermic syringe in 1853, and went on to pioneer subcutaneous injection.
42. Ice Hockey
Scots regiments stationed in Canada played the Scottish sport of shinty on frozen lakes in the Winter, leading to the development of the popular “Canadian” sport.
43. Insulin
The Scottish biochemist and physiologist John Macleod won the 1923 Nobel prize in Medicine for discovering and isolating insulin, a breakthrough that led to effective treatments for diabetes.
44. Iron-hulled Ships
In the 19th century the introduction of steam engines into ships led to structural problems. The Scottish engineer and shipbuilder Sir William Fairbairn pioneered the building of iron-hulled ships, starting with the iron-hulled paddle-steamer Lord Dundas in 1830.
45. Industrial Revolution
Without James Watt, the Industrial Revolution might never have happened. His radical improvements to the steam engine design, including a separate condenser and rotary motion, vastly improved the power of the engines and made them strong enough to power factories, drive trains, and push ships.
46. Kaleidoscopes
In addition to making enormous contributions to the field of optics, the Edinburgh-based physicist Sir David Brewster also invented the popular children’s toy in 1815.
47. Kelvin Scale
Lord Kelvin’s work on thermodynamics in the 19th century played a vital role in the development of physics. An important aspect of this was the Kelvin Scale, an absolute scale of thermodynamic activity that provided the basis for precise theoretical analysis.
48. Kinetic Theory of Gases
The basis of the kinetic theory of gases is the Maxwell–Boltzmann Distribution. The original theory was first hypothesised by the Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell and confirmed later in conjunction with Ludwig Boltzmann.
49. LARPing
In addition to being the pioneer of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott was also the Father of LARPing, the assumption, through cultural means, of exotic identities drawn from past times and places. Scott was instrumental in creating the heavily romanticized identity that Scotland used to rebrand itself from a drab and dour nation of unsmiling Calvinists to a cheerful land of tartan, whisky, bagpipes, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the Loch Ness Monster.
50. Latent Heat Theory
One of the foundations of thermodynamics and thus physics itself was the concept of latent heat, first put forward by the Scottish chemist Joseph Black in 1762. This helped the understanding of phenomena like fusion and vaporization, vital to scientific progress.
51. Lime Cordial
Building the British Empire not only required keeping malaria at bay with gin and tonics (see above), but also fending off scurvy. The Scottish doctor James Lind discovered the connection between vitamin C and resistance to scurvy, and advocated the drinking of lime juice as a preventative measure. The juice was usually mixed with alcohol and given to sailors on long voyages, which is also how Britons got their “Limey” nickname from Americans. In 1867 Lauchlan Rose, a Scottish shipbuilder, patented a method of preserving concentrated citrus juice with sugar instead of alcohol, thus creating Rose’s Lime Cordial.
52. Logarithms and Decimal Fractions
Logarithms were devised by the Scottish landowner John Napier in the early 17th century. They were rapidly adopted by navigators, scientists, and engineers to improve computations. Napier also introduced decimal fractions and invented "Napier's bones," an abacus to calculate the products and quotients of numbers—effectively the mainframe computer of its day.
53. Combating Malaria
While gins and tonic laced with quinine helped keep malaria at bay, the first breakthrough in defeating the disease came in 1897 when the Scottish doctor Sir Ronald Ross uncovered and explained the transmission mechanism of the disease, namely the humble mosquito.
54. Marmalade
Janet Keiller created the first recipe for the popular fruit preserve in the Scottish city of Dundee in 1797.
55. The Mechanical Reaping Machine
Patrick Bell was a Church of Scotland minister and part-time inventor. In 1828 he invented and built a mechanical reaping machine that used a revolving, 12-vane reel to pull the crops over the cutting knife. Being a man of god he decided to seek no gain from his invention and failed to patent the highly successful design.
56. Movie Cameras
The first motion picture camera was devised in 1889 by the Scotsman William Kennedy Dickson, who was working for Thomas Edison’s company in the USA. While Edison conceived the idea and initiated the experiments, Dickson performed the bulk of the experimentation, leading most scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for the invention. (Edison, of course, had some Scottish ancestry too.)
57. MRI Body Scanners
A vital tool in fighting a variety of illnesses, MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, radio waves, and field gradients to form images of the human body. During the 1970s, a team led by John Mallard, Professor of Medical Physics, built the first full body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen.
58. Discovery of Noble Gases
Sir William Ramsay won a Nobel Prize for his work on discovering and isolating the noble gases—argon, helium, neon, krypton and xenon. This added an entire section to the periodic table of atomic elements.
59. Nordic Noir
Scandinavian crime dramas like "Stieg Larsson," "Wallander," and "The Killing" would not have been possible without the grim and gritty Scottish detective series "Taggart." This set the template for Nordic noir and had a cult following in Sweden and Denmark, inspiring a generation of Nordic crime writers.
60. Paraffin
In the 1840s, the Scottish chemist James Young discovered that by heating coal you could distill paraffin (kerosene), a useful fuel for heating and lighting in the days before electricity.
61. Penicillin
If Ayrshire-born Alexander Fleming hadn't been such an untidy scientist we would never have the life-saving drugs we have today. His discovery of a mould growing in one of his culture dishes that killed the surrounding bacteria prompted one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the 20th century.
62. Percussion Caps
This crucial invention enabled muzzleloading firearms to fire reliably in any weather. It was invented by the Scottish Presbyterian clergyman Alexander Forsyth in 1807, just in time to win the Napoleonic Wars.
63. Piano Foot Pedals
East Lothian-born carpenter John Broadwood is credited with developing the foot-pedal method for sustaining the pianoforte's sounded notes. Broadwood also revolutionised the instrument's previously boxy design, coming up with the grand piano in 1777, extending its range from five to seven octaves.
64. Pharmacopaedia
The first modern pharmacopaedia—an encyclopedia of medicines—was compiled by William Cullen in 1776. The book became "Europe's principal text on the classification and treatment of disease." Cullen also coined the terms "nervous energy" and "neuroses."
65. Pneumatic Tires
"Where there's a hit, there's a writ." So, the question of who invented the highly successful inflatable rubber tire had to be fought out in a legal battle between two Scots. Veterinary surgeon John Boyd Dunlop, who patented a pneumatic bicycle tire for his son's tricycle in 1888, is commonly credited with the invention.
66. Porridge
"Parritch," as it is correctly known, has been described as the "backbone of many a sturdy Scotsman," and was made famous by the Highland soldiers of the 18th century. Eaten for breakfast or left to harden into slabs for consumption later, it became the symbol of a tough Spartan or Puritan diet.
67. Postage-Stamp Adhesive
James Chalmers from Dundee came up with the idea of postage stamps coming ready coated with adhesive, making them much easier to use.
68. Radar
Developed in secret during the Second World War, the detection system, which uses radio waves to determine the location and speed of an object, was invented by Angus-born Robert Watson-Watt in 1936, just in time to play a key role in the Battle of Britain in 1940.
69. Radiation Therapy
The first hospital radiation therapy unit was created by John Macintyre in 1902 to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of injuries and illness at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
70. Radios
While the Italian-Irish-Scottish inventor Guglielmo Marconi is usually credited as the inventor of radio, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell laid the groundwork with his research into electromagnetism.
71. Raincoats
First sold in 1824, the Macintosh coat is named after its Glaswegian inventor, Charles Macintosh. He designed one of the first waterproof fabrics by rubberising sheets of material in his textile factory.
72. Rapping
While rapping has clearly gone downhill since we hived it off to African Americans, rap battles are thought to have originated in the medieval Caledonian art of "flyting."
73. Refrigeration
Considering its wintry temperatures, you would not think refrigeration would be a major concern in Scotland, but it was here in 1748 that the physicist and chemist William Cullen demonstrated the first method of artificial refrigeration, using a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled, absorbing heat from its surroundings.
74. Roller Printing
This method of printing colours on textiles was invented by Thomas Bell in 1783 and greatly speeded up the process.
75. SAS
The Special Air Services is the template of almost all the special forces operating in the world today. It was founded in World War II during the North African desert campaign by the Scottish soldier Sir David Stirling, with the intention of attacking behind enemy lines. They subsequently did most of their early training in the Scottish Highlands.
76. Seismometers
This is a device that measures earthquakes. The Chinese invented primitive versions thousands of years ago, but the first modern one was invented in 1842 by Edinburgh scientist James David Forbes.
77. The Shot Put
Several modern athletics events, including the shot put and the hammer throw, derive from the Scottish Highland Games.
78. Signalling
The coming of the steam age meant that the way that ships communicated with each other would have to change, as flags in the rigging would no longer be possible. The Scottish admiral Philip Howard Colomb devised a new system using signal lamps and Morse code. His system was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1867.
79. Modern General Theory of Solitons
A soliton is a "self-reinforcing solitary wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity." It is an important element of physics. It was first described by the Scottish Victorian scientist John Scott Russell in 1834 after observing an unusual wave pattern in a canal.
80. Statistical Graphics
No one had a greater impact on the "visualization of data" than William Playfair, a Scottish engineer and political economist, who invented the first statistical line charts, bar charts, and pie charts, among many other kinds of graphs.
81. Steam Hammers
Large industrial hammers, driven by steam power, that were used to shape large pieces of wrought iron. They were invented in 1837 by Scot James Nasmyth. His steam hammers were so finely engineered that they were able to crack the top of the shell of an egg placed in a wine glass, without breaking the glass.
82. Stereotypes
A stereotype is a type of printing plate, in which a whole page of type is cast in a single mould to improve the quality and speed of printing. This was invented by the Scottish goldsmith William Ged in 1725.
83. Stirling Engines
A Stirling Engine is a closed-cycle regenerative heat engine with a permanently gaseous working fluid that is much more efficient at transferring heat to motion than a steam engine. It was invented by the Rev. Robert Stirling in 1816 and prepared the way for increasingly powerful industrial engines in the later 19th century.
84. Discovery of Staphylococcus
Staphylococcus is an important form of "grape-shaped" bacteria. Its discovery by the Scottish surgeon Sir Alexander Ogston in 1880 was a major breakthrough in bacteriology.
85. Tarmac
Ever wonder where the word "tarmac" came from? No. Add "tar" to the surname of Scottish engineer and road builder, John McAdam, and you get tarmcadam, subsequently shortened to tarmac. His process of "macadamisation" developed smooth, hard-surfaced roads from the 1820s onwards, paving the way for high speed road travel.
86. Telephones
"Mr Watson—come here—I want to see you," are the famous first words that Scottish inventor Alexander Bell uttered to his assistant during his invention of the first practical telephone in the 1870s.
87. Televisions
John Logie Baird from Helensburgh was behind the first working television, the first colour television, and the first transatlantic television transmission, all achieved in the 1920s.
88. Thermodynamic Cycle
William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) was a brilliant scientist who did tremendous work on the thermodynamic cycle. Along with the German physicist Rudolf Clausius and his fellow Scot Lord Kelvin, he is considered one of the founders of the science of thermodynamics.
89. Time Zones and Universal Standard Time
Scottish engineer and inventor Sir Sandford Fleming (1827–1915) came up with the idea of having standardized time zones, a great help in organizing global trade and business. It was also a vital development for the Alt-Right, helping us to arrange countless transnational podcasts.
90. Toasters
People used to turn their bread crisp and brown by holding it over an open flame until Scottish inventor Alan MacMasters realized that a new high resistance wire could be heated to a high enough temperature to toast it, designing the first electric toaster in 1893.
91. Tractor Beams
For most people this is still the stuff of science fiction, but in 2013 a team from St. Andrews University created the the world's first functioning tractor beam, capable of pulling objects on a microscopic level.
92. Tree Shelters
In 1979 Graham Tuley came up with the Tuley tree shelter. This is a type of tubular plastic shelter that creates a nurturing microclimate in the early stages of tree growth, while also protecting them from browsing herbivores.
93. Tropical Medicine
Born near Aberdeen, Sir Patrick Manson's medical career led him to more tropical climes, where his discoveries in parasitology led to the creation of Tropical Medicine, as separate medical discipline.
94. Two-Stroke Engine
Compared to the four-stroke engine, the two-stroke engine has a high power-to-weight ration, making it ideal for motorbikes, snow mobiles, and chainsaws. The world's first successful two-stroke engine was developed by the Scottish engineer Sir Dugald Clerk in 1878.
95. Ultrasound Scanner
Ian Donald, a Scottish physician, pioneered the use of diagnostic ultrasound in medicine, after seeing ultrasound used in Glasgow shipyards to look for flaws in ship metal.
96. Undersea Coal Mining
Sir George Bruce of Carnock pioneered several techniques for mining coal that lay under the sea, tunneling out below the sea and creating an artificial island where a shaft could be used to lift the coal to waiting boats. In 1617, King James visited Bruce's mine and walked down the tunnel to the island, returning to land by boat.
97. US Navy
Sailor John Paul Jones is known in America as the founder of the country's naval force. Born on the estate of Arbigland near Kirkbean, southwest Scotland, he later emigrated and fought against Britain in the American War of Independence.
98. US Presidents
An astonishing 24 presidents of the United States have substantial Scots heritage, including many of the most distinguished: Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump.
99. Vaccine for Typhoid Fever
Pathologist Sir William B. Leishman (1865–1926) from Glasgow developed a vaccine for typhoid fever, among several other medical advances.
100. Vacuum Flask
Nothing better than a hot cup of tea on a ramble. That wouldn't be possible without the vacuum flask, the brainchild of Scottish physicist and chemist Sir James Dewar, who invented it in 1892.
101. Whisky
One of Scotland's greatest contributions to the World is whisky, the "water of life." There is reliable evidence of it being distilled in Scotland in 1494, although its history no doubt goes back even further. It is suitable that this comes at the end of the list, so raise a glass and toast (Scottish invention) the genius of the Scots.
The good thing about "Black History Month" is not that it makes us consider the achievements of Blacks—for whatever reason those are too few and far between—but that it forces us consider our own awe-inspiring achievements. Black History Month thus becomes a good excuse for a bit of White Pride.
After whizzing through jazz, necklacing, peanut butter, and daggering (a Jamaican dance craze), and one or two other dubious and minor achievements, I simply ran out of steam (Scottish invention—at least in its efficient industrial application).
No doubt this historical deficit is caused by racism, slavery, or "evil White people stealing their science" (Black invention). Whatever the reason, it does little to address the basic problem, that Black History Month lacks a lot of history.
So, instead of focusing on the comparative desert of Black contributions to human civilization, as Leftists would cruelly have us do, I have decided to fill out my long list with the achievements of what Liberals assure me is a practically identical racial group, namely my own ethnic group the Scots.
The Scots or course are just one of many European ethnicities whose enormous contributions to World civilization are quietly stacked up in vast mountain ranges of achievement, with scarcely a whisper of official approval or celebration.
So, without further ado, then, here is my list of Scottish inventions and innovations to set against the great sucking chasm left by focusing solely on Black contributions for a whole month. Strap in as it's going to be an extremely long ride.
*************
Probably the biggest rock band ever: Three of the main members, the Young brothers and Bon Scott, were all born in Scotland, before their families emigrated to Australia and changed rock history.
2. Anti Cancer Vaccine
Another Scottish Australian connection. After emigrating to Australia, Dr. Ian Frazer from Glasgow developed the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine that is now used against cervical cancer.
3. Australian Rules Football
Scots, like the McCracken family from Ayrshire who established the Essendon Football Club, were prominent in the evolution of the game and the development of the rules.
 |
| Imagine a world where walls give you money. James Goodfellow did. |
The automated teller machine with a PIN number was invented by James Goodfellow from Paisley in 1966.
5. Bank of England:
The Scottish trader, Sir William Paterson, proposed the idea of the Bank of England and was among the first directors.
6. Bank of France
In 1716, the Scottish financial genius—and mountebank—John Law founded the Banque Générale, the first effective national bank in France.
 |
| Lord Reith, no doubt spinning in his grave. |
Nobody had a greater influence on the BBC than John Reith, its first general manager and director-general, who established the corporation as a national institution before its later decline into political correctness.
8. Beta Blockers
For such an Alpha nation it is appropriate that we should have developed the first beta-blocker drugs. Invented by Sir James W. Black from Lanarkshire, they revolutionized the treatment of angina, winning Sir James the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988.
7. Bicycles
The blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented and rode the first pedal cycle in 1839. He was also involved in the first bicycle crash in 1842, when he was fined for knocking over a pedestrian.
8. Bond
Not only was superspy James Bond created by the Anglo-Scottish writer Ian Fleming, but much of the groundwork for the character was done by another Scottish author John Buchan, whose adventure novels, like “The 39 Steps,” inspired Fleming.
9. Bovril Beef Extract
In 1870 John Lawson Johnston, a Scotsman living in Canada, invented this form of easily bottled “liquid beef” as a convenient war food. The name derives from the Latin for ox, “bovem” and “Vril-ya,” a race of superior beings from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's then-popular novel, “The Coming Race” (1870).
10. Boys' Brigade and Boy Scouts
Like the Hitler Youth, but for Christians. The BB, which was also the forerunner of the Boy Scouts, was founded in Glasgow by Sir William Alexander Smith in 1883. The idea was to develop “Christian manliness” by the use of military discipline and order, gymnastics, camps, religious services, and classes. Hitler later pinched this idea for his own youth organization, the cad!
 |
| Boys keep winning. |
11. The British Raj
After the Act of Union in 1707, Scots flooded into India as soldiers, traders, engineers, missionaries, planters, teachers, and governors. According to historian Niall Ferguson, the East India Company was “at the very least half-Scottish.”
12. Calendars
The oldest known lunar calendar has been found in Scotland at Warren Field, dating back to around 8,000 BC, so, yes, we can now claim that one as well. Sorry Babylonians.
13. Can-filling Machines
John West from Linlithgow emigrated to the USA, where he set up the salmon canning company that bears his name, and invented the first automated can-filling machine.
14. Capitalism
In 1776 Adam Smith published “Wealth of Nations,” essentially the “foundation document” of modern capitalism.
15. Carronades
The carronade was a short, powerful, smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed by the Scottish soldier Robert Melville and made at the Carron Ironworks in Falkirk. Fitted on ships, these gave the Royal Navy a decisive advantage over its rivals in battles like Trafalgar, and ensured British naval dominance during the Napoleonic Wars.
 |
| Not its intended use. |
After experimenting on himself, Sir James Simpson introduced chloroform as an anaesthetic to ease the pain of childbirth in 1847. Occasionally, it has also served as an unorthodox dating aid.
17. Cloud Chambers
The Scottish physicist Charles Thomson Rees Wilson received the Nobel Prize for his invention of the cloud chamber, a particle detector that played a vital role in experimental particle physics, during the breakthrough period of the 1920s to the 1950s.
18. Colour Photography
The 19th-century Scottish scientist James Maxwell invented the "three-colour method" of colour photography and took the first known colour photograph.
19. Cordite
One of the disadvantages of gunpowder was the large amount of smoke it generated, a particular drawback in naval battles, where smoke on the horizon could give away a ship's position. There were therefore several attempts to invent a relatively smokeless propellant. In 1889 the Scottish chemist and physicist Sir James Dewar invented cordite, which dominated armaments for the following decades, including the vital WWI period.
20. Cloning
The world's first cloned mammal was created in 1996 by a team of experts at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, many of whom were Scottish.
21. Criminal Fingerprinting
Dr. Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon from Ayrshire working in Japan, realised from examining the fingerprints on ancient Japanese pottery that fingerprinting with ink would be an effective way to identify criminals.
 |
| A truly Hyperborean sport. |
The earliest known written reference to this winter sport is 1541, in a document in Paisley Abbey. The oldest club in the world is the Kilsyth Curling Club, which dates back to 1716.
23. Decompression Tables
Vital for divers. The Scottish physiologist John Scott Haldane devised the first decompression table to safely calculate the return of deep-sea divers to surface atmospheric conditions. He also pioneered oxygen therapy and discovered the Haldane Effect, a property of haemoglobin, useful in treating emphysema. (See also Gas Masks.)
24. Electric Clocks
In 1840, Alexander Bain, a clock and instrument maker from Caithness, was the first to invent and patent the electric clock. (See also Fax Machine.)
25. Electrocardiography
The electronic recording of the activity of a human heart was carried out for the first time in 1872 by the Scottish doctor Alexander Muirhead at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London.
26. Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism is a major branch of physics with multiple applications. Before the work of James Clerk Maxwell, electricity and magnetism were thought of as two separate forces, but his seminal 1873 “Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism” showed how the two were part of the same electromagnetic force, leading to enormous advances in physics.
27. Encyclopædia Britannica
The first edition of the famous book of knowledge and precursor of Wikipedia was produced in 1768 by the Edinburgh printers Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell.
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| Conquer knowledge. |
Alexander Bain, the inventor of the electric clock, also produced the world's first fax machine in 1846.
29. Flushing Toilets
Alexander Cummings, an Edinburgh watchmaker, was the first to patent a design for a flush toilet, also inventing the, S-trap, which is still in use today, to prevent smells coming out of the sewer.
30. Fresno Scrapers
The Fresno Scraper forms the basis of modern earthmoving scrapers. It was invented in 1883 in Fresno California by James Porteous from Haddington in Scotland.
31. Gas Lighting
Before electric lighting the main source of lighting was coal-gas lighting. This was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in 1792, when he managed to create an even supply of gas by heating coal.
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| Other, weaker nations complain about gas, Scots find solutions. |
This was developed by the Scottish physiologist, John Scott Haldane, after the Germans started using poison gas in WWI. (See also Decompression Tables.)
33. Incandescent Light Bulbs
This is a light bulb that uses a wire filament heated to a high temperature. Its invention is often attributed to the Englishmen Joseph Swan in 1878, but many years earlier, in 1835, Scottish inventor James Bowman Lindsay had demonstrated a similar device, but failed to patent it.
34. Geology
James Hutton, a native of the rocky city of Edinburgh, created the science of Geology in 1785, when his “Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe” was read to meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
35. Gin and Tonic
In the 18th century, it was discovered that quinine could cure malaria, but even diluted in tonic water, the taste was extremely bitter until George Cleghorn, an Edinburgh doctor started adding gin, creating the quintessential drink of the British Empire.
36. Golf
The first written record of this popular sport goes back to 1457, when King James II unsuccessfully attempted to ban it as a distraction from the important practice of archery.
37. Gospel Singing
Along with Egyptian pyramid building, gospel singing is yet another aspect of non-Black culture that Blacks have attempted to appropriate. However, according to Yale University music professor Willie Ruff, its true roots lie in the Scottish Hebrides, where Gaelic hymns were sung using a call and response technique called "lining out." Hebrideans came into contact with Blacks through the slave trade, whereupon Blacks picked up this technique on which gospel singing is founded.
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| The invention of "Scotland." |
Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley,” published in 1814, is credited with being the first historical novel. This and subsequent novels by Scott had an enormous impact on European literature, inspiring the likes of Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, and many German and Russian writers.
39. Hot Blast Ovens
The hot blast oven patented by the Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828 was one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution. Pumping in hot air rather than cold air achieved much greater temperatures and meant that coal could be used instead of coke, greatly increasing the overall efficiency and economy of iron smelting.
40. Hypnotism
The Kinross-born surgeon James Braid is known as "The Father of Modern Hypnotism," turning it from a parlour amusement to a useful medical technique and therapy to treat a wide range of ailments.
41. Hypodermic Syringes
Basing his idea on the sting of a bee, the Edinburgh-based physician Alexander Wood invented the hypodermic syringe in 1853, and went on to pioneer subcutaneous injection.
42. Ice Hockey
Scots regiments stationed in Canada played the Scottish sport of shinty on frozen lakes in the Winter, leading to the development of the popular “Canadian” sport.
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| Shinty, the origin of ice hockey. |
43. Insulin
The Scottish biochemist and physiologist John Macleod won the 1923 Nobel prize in Medicine for discovering and isolating insulin, a breakthrough that led to effective treatments for diabetes.
44. Iron-hulled Ships
In the 19th century the introduction of steam engines into ships led to structural problems. The Scottish engineer and shipbuilder Sir William Fairbairn pioneered the building of iron-hulled ships, starting with the iron-hulled paddle-steamer Lord Dundas in 1830.
45. Industrial Revolution
Without James Watt, the Industrial Revolution might never have happened. His radical improvements to the steam engine design, including a separate condenser and rotary motion, vastly improved the power of the engines and made them strong enough to power factories, drive trains, and push ships.
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| Hours of fun. |
In addition to making enormous contributions to the field of optics, the Edinburgh-based physicist Sir David Brewster also invented the popular children’s toy in 1815.
47. Kelvin Scale
Lord Kelvin’s work on thermodynamics in the 19th century played a vital role in the development of physics. An important aspect of this was the Kelvin Scale, an absolute scale of thermodynamic activity that provided the basis for precise theoretical analysis.
48. Kinetic Theory of Gases
The basis of the kinetic theory of gases is the Maxwell–Boltzmann Distribution. The original theory was first hypothesised by the Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell and confirmed later in conjunction with Ludwig Boltzmann.
49. LARPing
In addition to being the pioneer of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott was also the Father of LARPing, the assumption, through cultural means, of exotic identities drawn from past times and places. Scott was instrumental in creating the heavily romanticized identity that Scotland used to rebrand itself from a drab and dour nation of unsmiling Calvinists to a cheerful land of tartan, whisky, bagpipes, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the Loch Ness Monster.
50. Latent Heat Theory
One of the foundations of thermodynamics and thus physics itself was the concept of latent heat, first put forward by the Scottish chemist Joseph Black in 1762. This helped the understanding of phenomena like fusion and vaporization, vital to scientific progress.
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| Rule Britannia. |
Building the British Empire not only required keeping malaria at bay with gin and tonics (see above), but also fending off scurvy. The Scottish doctor James Lind discovered the connection between vitamin C and resistance to scurvy, and advocated the drinking of lime juice as a preventative measure. The juice was usually mixed with alcohol and given to sailors on long voyages, which is also how Britons got their “Limey” nickname from Americans. In 1867 Lauchlan Rose, a Scottish shipbuilder, patented a method of preserving concentrated citrus juice with sugar instead of alcohol, thus creating Rose’s Lime Cordial.
52. Logarithms and Decimal Fractions
Logarithms were devised by the Scottish landowner John Napier in the early 17th century. They were rapidly adopted by navigators, scientists, and engineers to improve computations. Napier also introduced decimal fractions and invented "Napier's bones," an abacus to calculate the products and quotients of numbers—effectively the mainframe computer of its day.
53. Combating Malaria
While gins and tonic laced with quinine helped keep malaria at bay, the first breakthrough in defeating the disease came in 1897 when the Scottish doctor Sir Ronald Ross uncovered and explained the transmission mechanism of the disease, namely the humble mosquito.
54. Marmalade
Janet Keiller created the first recipe for the popular fruit preserve in the Scottish city of Dundee in 1797.
55. The Mechanical Reaping Machine
Patrick Bell was a Church of Scotland minister and part-time inventor. In 1828 he invented and built a mechanical reaping machine that used a revolving, 12-vane reel to pull the crops over the cutting knife. Being a man of god he decided to seek no gain from his invention and failed to patent the highly successful design.
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| Bell neglected to "reap the rewards" of his reaping machine. |
56. Movie Cameras
The first motion picture camera was devised in 1889 by the Scotsman William Kennedy Dickson, who was working for Thomas Edison’s company in the USA. While Edison conceived the idea and initiated the experiments, Dickson performed the bulk of the experimentation, leading most scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for the invention. (Edison, of course, had some Scottish ancestry too.)
57. MRI Body Scanners
A vital tool in fighting a variety of illnesses, MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, radio waves, and field gradients to form images of the human body. During the 1970s, a team led by John Mallard, Professor of Medical Physics, built the first full body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen.
58. Discovery of Noble Gases
Sir William Ramsay won a Nobel Prize for his work on discovering and isolating the noble gases—argon, helium, neon, krypton and xenon. This added an entire section to the periodic table of atomic elements.
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| Taggart, the godfather of Nordic Noir |
Scandinavian crime dramas like "Stieg Larsson," "Wallander," and "The Killing" would not have been possible without the grim and gritty Scottish detective series "Taggart." This set the template for Nordic noir and had a cult following in Sweden and Denmark, inspiring a generation of Nordic crime writers.
60. Paraffin
In the 1840s, the Scottish chemist James Young discovered that by heating coal you could distill paraffin (kerosene), a useful fuel for heating and lighting in the days before electricity.
61. Penicillin
If Ayrshire-born Alexander Fleming hadn't been such an untidy scientist we would never have the life-saving drugs we have today. His discovery of a mould growing in one of his culture dishes that killed the surrounding bacteria prompted one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the 20th century.
62. Percussion Caps
This crucial invention enabled muzzleloading firearms to fire reliably in any weather. It was invented by the Scottish Presbyterian clergyman Alexander Forsyth in 1807, just in time to win the Napoleonic Wars.
63. Piano Foot Pedals
East Lothian-born carpenter John Broadwood is credited with developing the foot-pedal method for sustaining the pianoforte's sounded notes. Broadwood also revolutionised the instrument's previously boxy design, coming up with the grand piano in 1777, extending its range from five to seven octaves.
64. Pharmacopaedia
The first modern pharmacopaedia—an encyclopedia of medicines—was compiled by William Cullen in 1776. The book became "Europe's principal text on the classification and treatment of disease." Cullen also coined the terms "nervous energy" and "neuroses."
65. Pneumatic Tires
"Where there's a hit, there's a writ." So, the question of who invented the highly successful inflatable rubber tire had to be fought out in a legal battle between two Scots. Veterinary surgeon John Boyd Dunlop, who patented a pneumatic bicycle tire for his son's tricycle in 1888, is commonly credited with the invention.
66. Porridge
"Parritch," as it is correctly known, has been described as the "backbone of many a sturdy Scotsman," and was made famous by the Highland soldiers of the 18th century. Eaten for breakfast or left to harden into slabs for consumption later, it became the symbol of a tough Spartan or Puritan diet.
67. Postage-Stamp Adhesive
James Chalmers from Dundee came up with the idea of postage stamps coming ready coated with adhesive, making them much easier to use.
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| RAF radar station |
Developed in secret during the Second World War, the detection system, which uses radio waves to determine the location and speed of an object, was invented by Angus-born Robert Watson-Watt in 1936, just in time to play a key role in the Battle of Britain in 1940.
69. Radiation Therapy
The first hospital radiation therapy unit was created by John Macintyre in 1902 to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of injuries and illness at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
70. Radios
While the Italian-Irish-Scottish inventor Guglielmo Marconi is usually credited as the inventor of radio, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell laid the groundwork with his research into electromagnetism.
71. Raincoats
First sold in 1824, the Macintosh coat is named after its Glaswegian inventor, Charles Macintosh. He designed one of the first waterproof fabrics by rubberising sheets of material in his textile factory.
72. Rapping
While rapping has clearly gone downhill since we hived it off to African Americans, rap battles are thought to have originated in the medieval Caledonian art of "flyting."
73. Refrigeration
Considering its wintry temperatures, you would not think refrigeration would be a major concern in Scotland, but it was here in 1748 that the physicist and chemist William Cullen demonstrated the first method of artificial refrigeration, using a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled, absorbing heat from its surroundings.
74. Roller Printing
This method of printing colours on textiles was invented by Thomas Bell in 1783 and greatly speeded up the process.
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| "Scottish" Air Services? |
The Special Air Services is the template of almost all the special forces operating in the world today. It was founded in World War II during the North African desert campaign by the Scottish soldier Sir David Stirling, with the intention of attacking behind enemy lines. They subsequently did most of their early training in the Scottish Highlands.
76. Seismometers
This is a device that measures earthquakes. The Chinese invented primitive versions thousands of years ago, but the first modern one was invented in 1842 by Edinburgh scientist James David Forbes.
77. The Shot Put
Several modern athletics events, including the shot put and the hammer throw, derive from the Scottish Highland Games.
78. Signalling
The coming of the steam age meant that the way that ships communicated with each other would have to change, as flags in the rigging would no longer be possible. The Scottish admiral Philip Howard Colomb devised a new system using signal lamps and Morse code. His system was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1867.
79. Modern General Theory of Solitons
A soliton is a "self-reinforcing solitary wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity." It is an important element of physics. It was first described by the Scottish Victorian scientist John Scott Russell in 1834 after observing an unusual wave pattern in a canal.
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| William Playfair |
No one had a greater impact on the "visualization of data" than William Playfair, a Scottish engineer and political economist, who invented the first statistical line charts, bar charts, and pie charts, among many other kinds of graphs.
81. Steam Hammers
Large industrial hammers, driven by steam power, that were used to shape large pieces of wrought iron. They were invented in 1837 by Scot James Nasmyth. His steam hammers were so finely engineered that they were able to crack the top of the shell of an egg placed in a wine glass, without breaking the glass.
82. Stereotypes
A stereotype is a type of printing plate, in which a whole page of type is cast in a single mould to improve the quality and speed of printing. This was invented by the Scottish goldsmith William Ged in 1725.
83. Stirling Engines
A Stirling Engine is a closed-cycle regenerative heat engine with a permanently gaseous working fluid that is much more efficient at transferring heat to motion than a steam engine. It was invented by the Rev. Robert Stirling in 1816 and prepared the way for increasingly powerful industrial engines in the later 19th century.
84. Discovery of Staphylococcus
Staphylococcus is an important form of "grape-shaped" bacteria. Its discovery by the Scottish surgeon Sir Alexander Ogston in 1880 was a major breakthrough in bacteriology.
85. Tarmac
Ever wonder where the word "tarmac" came from? No. Add "tar" to the surname of Scottish engineer and road builder, John McAdam, and you get tarmcadam, subsequently shortened to tarmac. His process of "macadamisation" developed smooth, hard-surfaced roads from the 1820s onwards, paving the way for high speed road travel.
86. Telephones
"Mr Watson—come here—I want to see you," are the famous first words that Scottish inventor Alexander Bell uttered to his assistant during his invention of the first practical telephone in the 1870s.
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| Bell about to make the first telephone call. |
87. Televisions
John Logie Baird from Helensburgh was behind the first working television, the first colour television, and the first transatlantic television transmission, all achieved in the 1920s.
88. Thermodynamic Cycle
William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) was a brilliant scientist who did tremendous work on the thermodynamic cycle. Along with the German physicist Rudolf Clausius and his fellow Scot Lord Kelvin, he is considered one of the founders of the science of thermodynamics.
89. Time Zones and Universal Standard Time
Scottish engineer and inventor Sir Sandford Fleming (1827–1915) came up with the idea of having standardized time zones, a great help in organizing global trade and business. It was also a vital development for the Alt-Right, helping us to arrange countless transnational podcasts.
90. Toasters
People used to turn their bread crisp and brown by holding it over an open flame until Scottish inventor Alan MacMasters realized that a new high resistance wire could be heated to a high enough temperature to toast it, designing the first electric toaster in 1893.
91. Tractor Beams
For most people this is still the stuff of science fiction, but in 2013 a team from St. Andrews University created the the world's first functioning tractor beam, capable of pulling objects on a microscopic level.
92. Tree Shelters
In 1979 Graham Tuley came up with the Tuley tree shelter. This is a type of tubular plastic shelter that creates a nurturing microclimate in the early stages of tree growth, while also protecting them from browsing herbivores.
93. Tropical Medicine
Born near Aberdeen, Sir Patrick Manson's medical career led him to more tropical climes, where his discoveries in parasitology led to the creation of Tropical Medicine, as separate medical discipline.
94. Two-Stroke Engine
Compared to the four-stroke engine, the two-stroke engine has a high power-to-weight ration, making it ideal for motorbikes, snow mobiles, and chainsaws. The world's first successful two-stroke engine was developed by the Scottish engineer Sir Dugald Clerk in 1878.
95. Ultrasound Scanner
Ian Donald, a Scottish physician, pioneered the use of diagnostic ultrasound in medicine, after seeing ultrasound used in Glasgow shipyards to look for flaws in ship metal.
96. Undersea Coal Mining
Sir George Bruce of Carnock pioneered several techniques for mining coal that lay under the sea, tunneling out below the sea and creating an artificial island where a shaft could be used to lift the coal to waiting boats. In 1617, King James visited Bruce's mine and walked down the tunnel to the island, returning to land by boat.
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| John Paul Jones |
Sailor John Paul Jones is known in America as the founder of the country's naval force. Born on the estate of Arbigland near Kirkbean, southwest Scotland, he later emigrated and fought against Britain in the American War of Independence.
98. US Presidents
An astonishing 24 presidents of the United States have substantial Scots heritage, including many of the most distinguished: Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump.
99. Vaccine for Typhoid Fever
Pathologist Sir William B. Leishman (1865–1926) from Glasgow developed a vaccine for typhoid fever, among several other medical advances.
100. Vacuum Flask
Nothing better than a hot cup of tea on a ramble. That wouldn't be possible without the vacuum flask, the brainchild of Scottish physicist and chemist Sir James Dewar, who invented it in 1892.
101. Whisky
One of Scotland's greatest contributions to the World is whisky, the "water of life." There is reliable evidence of it being distilled in Scotland in 1494, although its history no doubt goes back even further. It is suitable that this comes at the end of the list, so raise a glass and toast (Scottish invention) the genius of the Scots.
The good thing about "Black History Month" is not that it makes us consider the achievements of Blacks—for whatever reason those are too few and far between—but that it forces us consider our own awe-inspiring achievements. Black History Month thus becomes a good excuse for a bit of White Pride.
