Scottish Inventors

For such a small country Scotland has given the world so much in the worlds of
science, engineering and communication. I hope these pages give you an insight
into some of the Scots and the invention that they gave the world.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh in March 1847 in a house
on South Charlotte Street. He was a teacher of speech to the deaf being
resident master at Weston House Academy in Elgin before moving to Canada
with his father when he was 23. He was then offered the job of Professor
of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at Boston University.

It was while working in Boston that he fell in love with Mabel Hubbard
the deaf daughter of a powerful businessman. Bell decide that he would
have to earn his fortune in order to be able to marry Mabel so he decided
to turn to invention.

Although his efforts were to lead to the invention of the telephone
it was a multiple telegraph which would allow many messages to be sent
at different pitches that he set out to invent. Mabels father liked the
idea and provided Bell with financial backing.

It was while working on this that Bell realised that his device was
carrying a faint echo of speech. Bell and his assistant Tom Watson
decided to see if they could make the wires carry human speech properly.

Gardiner Hubbard his backer thought that this was a crazy idea and
insisted that Bell keep working on the telegraph idea that he was
backing him for. But Bell and his assistant kept working on the
telephone too and on 10 March 1876 Bell shouted to his assistant
in the next room using his device

"Watson come here. I want you"

Hubbard still did not think that the telephone would amount to
anything and with work on the multiple telegraph almost complete
convinced him to demonstrate that to the US Centennial Exhibition
later that year. The audience loved the telegraph machine but
Bell also showed them the telephone. It was the most amazing
thing that any of them had ever seen and even Hubbard realised
it was going to be a success.

In 1877 Bell realised his dream and married Mabel Hubbard.

 

John Boyd Dunlop

 

John Boyd Dunlop was the inventor of the pneumatic tyre and was born
at Dreghorn in Ayrshire in 1840. After qualifying as a vet he moved to
Belfast to set up practice in 1867.

In 1887 his son came to him complaining that his tricycle was too bumpy
to ride properly. realising that the problem lay with the solid tyres he
hit upon th idea of filling a hollow tube with air and putting inside the tyres
thus cushioning the tricycle against the bumpy roads.

He gave the tyres their first public display in 1889 at the Queens College
sports day where the spectators laughed and called his tyres "pudding tyres"
Dunlop had the last laugh as his rider won easily.

He went into business with a belfast businessman and they set up the Dunlop
company which is still one of the worlds biggest tyre manufacturers.

 

John Logie Baird

John logie Baird was born in Helensburgh in 1888 and was famous for inventing
the television. When forced to retire from his job through illness he laboured on
with his desire to invent a machine which could send moving pictures by radio waves.

In 1923 he patented his device called a televisor and produced the first working
model by 1924 which he used to transmit a picture of a maltese cross 1m away. It
wasnt untill 1926 that he managed to transmit moving pictures. In 1928 he transmited
picures to New York by telephone line which was the worlds first transatlantic
broadcast.

The BBC became interested in his technology and used it to set up their television
service but they soon however switched to the system developed by EMI.
Baird however kept working on the technology and by 1938 had developed a
colour TV system. He also was ahead of his time in developing high definition TV.

 

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