Thursday, June 08, 2006

For John....

After John wrote "Well if you weren't all too busy wearing skirts, head butting each other and eating turnips you might have found the time to create your own television channels, radio shows, newspapers and clean drinking water." in the comments of "Why The Home Countries dont want Eng-er-land to win" I thought i would post this:

Whas like us...

As the average Englishman moves about the home he calls his castle, watch him enjoy a typical English breakfast of toast and marmalade invented by Mrs Keiller of Dundee, Scotland; see him slipping into his national costume, a soiled raincoat, patented by Charles MacIntosh, a Glasgow druggist; and follow his footsteps over the linoleum flooring invented in Kirkcaldy, Scotland.

On The Road Out he goes - along the English lane surfaced by John MacAdam of Ayr, Scotland (known as the MacAdamized road), smoking an English cigarette, first manufactured by Robert Croag of Perthshire, Scotland. He hops aboard an English bus, which is using tyres invented by John Boyd Dunlop, of Dreghorn, Scotland and later completes his journey by rail. (A reminder the James Watt of Greenock, Scotland invented the Steam Engine). At the office he is presented with the morning mail containing adhesive stamps invented by John Chalmers of Dundee, Scotland; and periodically during the day, he reaches for the telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born of Scottish parents.

At home in the evening, our English cousins wife is preparing his national dish of roast beef of old England - prime Aberdeen Angus, raised in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This sets the patriotic heart beating a little faster, and he enters the dining room whistling "Ye Mariners of England" written and composed by Thomas Campbell of Glasgow, Scotland. After dinner there follows a scene typical of English domestic bliss. Young Albert is packed off to Boys Brigade, founded by Sir William Smith of Glasgow, Scotland; Ted goes to the Scouts, the present Chief of which is Sir Charles MacLean of Duart, Scotland; and little Ethel plays on her bicycle, invented by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a blacksmith of Dumfries, Scotland. Mother, in the kitchen, bleaches clothes with bleach invented by James McGregor of Glasgow, Scotland. dad listens to the news on the television, invented by John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland, and hears an item about the United States Navy, founded by John Paul Jones, of Kirkbean, Scotland. Maybe, just maybe, he will remember that the radar with which the U.S. and other fleets are equipped was invented by Sir Robert A. Watson Watt, of Brechin, Scotland.

Once the children come home, Dad supervises the homework, using logarithms invented by John Napier of Edinburgh. The English course contains familiar books such as "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, and "Robinson Crusoe", based on the life of Alex Selkirk, of , Scotland. If by now he has been reminded too much of Scotland, he may in desperation pick up the bible - here at last to have something without Scottish associations; but he is disillusioned - the first man mentioned in the bible is a Scot, James VI, who authorised its translation. Its hopeless. Nowhere he can turn to escape the efficiency and ingenuity of the Scots. He could take a drink - but we supply the best in the world. He could stick his head in the oven - but the coal gas was discovered by William Murdoch of Ayr, Scotland. He could take rifle and blow his brains out, but. of course the breach loading rifle was invented by a Scot. Anyway, if he survived, injured, he would simple find himself on an operating table, injected with Penicillin, discovered by Alexander Flaming of Darvel, Scotland; given an anaesthetic discovered by James Young Simpson of Bathgate, Scotland; and operated on be antiseptic surgery pioneered at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. On coming out of the anaesthetic, he would probable take no comfort in learning from his surgeon that he was as safe as the Bank of England, founded by William Paterson of Dumfries, Scotland.

Poor fellows only hope would be to receive a transfusion of good SCOTs blood which would entitle him to ask

"Whas like us?"
Gie few and thur aw deed !

6 comments:

Benji said...

English Inventions

Agriculture
Seed drill - Jethro Tull

Communications
Clockwork radio - Trevor Baylis

Computing
Analytical engine - Sir Charles Babbage
ACE and Pilot ACE - Alan Turing
Bombe - Alan Turing
Colossus computer - Tommy Flowers
Difference engine - Sir Charles Babbage
World Wide Web - Sir Tim Berners-Lee
ZX Spectrum - Sir Clive Sinclair

Clock making
Anchor escapement - Robert Hooke
Balance spring - Robert Hooke (disputed - possibly invented by Christiaan Huygens of the Netherlands)
Grasshopper escapement - John Harrison
Gridiron pendulum - John Harrison

Clothing manufacturing
Derby Rib (stocking manufacture) - Jedediah Strutt
Flying shuttle - John Kay
Mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye - William Perkin
Power loom - Edmund Cartwright
Spinning frame - John Kay
Spinning jenny - James Hargreaves
Spinning mule - Samuel Crompton

Cryptography
Playfair cipher - Charles Wheatstone

Engineering
Adjustable spanner - Edwin Beard Budding
First coke-consuming blast furnace - Abraham Darby I
First working universal joint - Robert Hooke
Newcomen steam engine - Thomas Newcomen
Modified version of the Newcomen steam engine (Pickard engine) - James Pickard
Pendulum Governor - Frederick Lanchester
The first screw-cutting lathe - Henry Maudslay

Food
Bird's Custard - Alfred Bird
Sandwich - John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich

Household appliances
Ballbarrow - James Dyson
Cat flap - Sir Isaac Newton (attributed)
Collapsible baby buggy - Owen Maclaren
Dyson DC01 - James Dyson
Fire extinguisher - George William Manby
Lawn mower - Edwin Beard Budding
Rubber band - Stephen Perry

Industrial processes
Bessemer process - Henry Bessemer
Hydraulic press - Joseph Bramah
Parkesine, the first man-made plastic - Alexander Parkes
Portland cement - Joseph Aspdin
Sheffield plate - Thomas Boulsover
Water frame - Richard Arkwright

Medical
Artificial intraocular lens transplant surgery for cataract patients - Harold Ridley

Military
Congreve rocket - William Congreve
High explosive squash head - Sir Charles Dennistoun Burney
Puckle Gun - James Puckle
Shrapnel shell - Henry Shrapnel

Mining
Davy lamp - Humphry Davy
Geordie lamp - George Stephenson

Musical instruments
Concertina - Charles Wheatstone

Photography
Ambrotype - Frederick Scott Archer
Calotype - William Fox Talbot
Collodion process - Frederick Scott Archer
Stereoscope - Charles Wheatstone

Science
Compound microscope with 30x magnification - Robert Hooke
Electrical generator (dynamo) - Michael Faraday
Galvanometer - William Sturgeon
Marsh test for Arsenic - James Marsh
Newtonian telescope - Sir Isaac Newton
Micrometer - Sir William Gascoigne
the first bench micrometer that was capable of measuring to one ten thousandth of an inch - Henry Maudslay
Sinclair Executive, the world's first small electronic pocket calculator - Sir Clive Sinclair
Slide rule - William Oughtred
Synthesis of coumarin, one of the first synthetic perfumes, and cinnamic acid via the Perkin reaction- William Perkin

Locomotives
Blucher - George Stephenson
Puffing Billy -William Hedley
Locomotion No 1 - Robert Stephenson
Sans Pareil - Timothy Hackworth
Stephenson's Rocket - George and Robert Stephenson

Other railway developments
Displacement lubricator, Ramsbottom safety valve, the water trough, the split piston ring - John Ramsbottom

Roads
Bowden cable - Frank Bowden
Cat's eye - Percy Shaw
Caterpillar track - Sir George Cayley
Hansom cab - Joseph Hansom
Seat belt - George Cayley
Sinclair C5 - Sir Clive Sinclair
Tarmac - E. Purnell Hooley

Sea
Hovercraft - Christopher Cockerell
Lifeboat - Lionel Lukin
Resurgam - George Garrett
Turbinia, the first steam turbine powered steamship, designed by the Irish engineer Sir Charles Algernon Parsons and built in Newcastle upon Tyne

Air
Jet engine - Sir Frank Whittle

Miscellaneous
Daylight saving time - William Willett
Meccano - Frank Hornby

Jonneyboy said...

Well congratulations Tosh on finding a list written by a Scottish person highlighting all the things that the Scots have invented in 2 millenia.

It's quite impressive tho isn't it? It filled up a whole 3 paragraphs.

I'm sure if I looked hard enough on the Internet (incidentally, invented by an Englishman) there would probably be one relating English inventions to the average Scottish life - but because the English are busy keeping Hitler out, feeding the Scots or playing in the World Cup it probably hasn't been written yet.

TOSH said...

i have a whole book on scottish inventions

Logarithms
The Bank of England
Capitalism
The overdraft
The decimal point
The threshing machine
The gravitating compass
Street lighting
The steam engine
The pneumatic tyre
The pedal bicycle
Tarmacadam (the modern road surface)
The locomotive
The bus
The telegraph
The thermos flask
The telephone
The gas mask
Colour photographs
The lawnmower
Television
The fax machine
The photocopier
Video
The kaleidoscope
Theory of combustion
Electric light
Geology
Gardenias
Helium
Radar
Neon
Artificial ice
Dolly, the cloned sheep
The hypodermic syringe
Anaesthesia
Morphine
Antiseptics
Insulin
Penicillin
Interferon
The thermometer
Ante-natal clinics
Golf (or chinese now maybe)
Curling
Shinty
Tennis courts
The bowling green
The alpha chip
Blue lasers
Kerr Lens Modelocking techniques
Marmalade
Writing paper
The fountain pen
Postcards
The Mackintosh (aka raincoats)
Suspenders
Finger-printing
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Documentary films
The traffic cone
Sherlock Holmes

TOSH said...

We all know the YANKS defeted Hitler and the whole German force.

Benji said...

OK lets look at some of your scottish inventions/discoveries...

Logarithms - Jaina mathematicians in ancient India first conceived of logarithms from around the 2nd century BC. By the 2nd century AD, they performed a number of operations using logarithmic functions to base 2, and by the 8th century, Virasena described logarithms to bases 2, 3 and 4. By the 13th century, logarithmic tables were produced by Muslim mathematicians.
In the 17th century, Joost Bürgi, a Swiss clockmaker in the employ of the Duke of Hesse-Kassel, first discovered logarithms as a computational tool; however he did not publish his discovery until 1620. The method of logarithms was first publicly propounded in 1614, in a book entitled Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio, by John Napier, Baron of Merchiston in Scotland, four years after the publication of his memorable discovery.

Decimal Point - its regular usage and classification is attributed to Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Ḵwārizmī, a Persian scientist

Steam Engine - Early industrial steam engines were designed by Thomas Savery (the "fire-engine", 1698) but it was Thomas Newcomen and his "atmospheric-engine" of 1712 that demonstrated the first operational and practical industrial engine.
Humphrey Gainsborough produced a model condensing steam engine in the 1760s, which he showed to James Watt of Glasgow Green, Scotland. In 1769 Watt patented the first significant improvements to the Newcomen type vacuum engine that made it much more fuel efficient.

Bicycle - No single time or person can be identified with the invention of the bicycle. The most likely originator of the bicycle is German Karl Drais, then still a baron, who invented his machine in 1817, and patented it. Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan was believed to share creative credit with Drais for adding a treadle drive mechanism, in 1840, that enabled the rider to lift his feet off the ground while driving the rear wheel. However, some reports describe the vehicle attributed to MacMillan as more of a "quadricycle".

I can not be bothered to check the rest but as we can see so far the scots did not actually invent these items

Benji said...

The first traffic cone was invented in 1914 by American Charles P Rudabaker

Finger Prints - 1823: Jan Evangelista Purkyne, a professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing 9 fingerprint patterns, but he did not mention the use of fingerprints to identify persons.
1880: The Scot Dr Henry Faulds published his first paper on the subject in the scientific journal Nature in 1880. Returning to the UK in 1886, he offered the concept to the Metropolitan Police in London but was dismissed.
1892: Sir Francis Galton published a detailed statistical model of fingerprint analysis and identification and encouraged its use in forensic science in his book Finger Prints.

Penacillin - The serendipitous discovery of penicillin is usually attributed to Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming in 1928, though others had earlier noted the antibacterial effects of Penicillium.

RADAR - Several inventors, scientists, and engineers contributed to the development of radar. The use of radio waves to detect "the presence of distant metallic objects via radio waves" was first implemented in 1904 by Christian Hülsmeyer, who demonstrated the feasibility of detecting the presence of ships in dense fog and received a patent for radar as Reichspatent Nr. 165546. Another of the first working models was produced by Hungarian Zoltán Bay in 1936 at the Tungsram laboratory.

Lawnmower - The idea of a machine to cut grass was conceived in Gloucestershire, England around 1830 by freelance engineer Edwin Beard Budding. Formerly a carpenter at Chalford, he was possibly inspired by a rotary cutter designed to cut the nap off wool cloth at the Brinscomb Mill. Budding's mower was designed primarily to cut the lawn on sports grounds and expansive gardens as a superior alternative to the scythe. His patent of 25 October, 1830 described "a new combination and application of machinery for the purpose of cropping or shearing the vegetable surfaces of lawns, grass-plats and pleasure grounds." The patent went on to state, "country gentlemen may find in using my machine themselves an amusing, useful and healthy exercise."

In an agreement between John Ferrebee and Edwin Budding dated May 18, 1830, Ferrebee paid the costs of development, obtained letters of patent and acquired rights to manufacture, sell and license other manufacturers in the production of lawnmowers. (The agreement is housed in the Stroud Museum).