OVER the next week, The Scotsman will be profiling some of the greatest Scottish inventors of all time - and giving readers the chance to vote for the inventor who they believe has made the great contribution to the modern world.
There are theorists like James Clerk Maxwell and Lord Kelvin, who laid the foundations for modern science - also James Watt and his steam engine, and John Logie Baird and his mechanical television - through to modern heroes, like James Black and Ian
Donald, whose contributions to medicine are still saving lives today.
Scotland is renowned for its contribution to engineering, science and medicine over the centuries, with its inventors, researchers and entrepreneurs sharing the fruits of their successes with people around the world.
Through a series of informative articles, readers will be able to find out more about the inventors and their famous works, plus gain an insight into the stories behind their inventions.
We will be profiling all the big names - from Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone through to Alexander Fleming's penicillin - and telling the stories of some of the lesser-known inventors, including James Goodfellow, who gave us the modern cash machine, and John Dunlop, whose tyre revolutionised transport.
Follow the inventors through The Scotsman until next Saturday and then remember to vote for your favourite inventor - online, via email, by text or post. The winner will be revealed in two weeks' time.
NAME: John Logie Baird
BORN: 13 August, 1888, Helensburgh
DIED: 14 June, 1946, Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex
CLAIM TO FAME: The inventor gave the first public demonstration of television and did groundbreaking work in the fields of fibre optics, infrared technology and radar
HE WAS the archetype of the eccentric inventor who made the world's first working television out of materials that included a tea-chest, a hat box, darning needles, sealing wax and glue.
Logie Baird, the son of a Helensburgh manse, gave the first public demonstration of television in a Soho attic on 26 January, 1926, in front of members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from the Times.
The inventor and entrepreneur had been obsessed since the age of 12 with the possibility of "transmitting pictures by telephone" and was finally ready to unveil his great invention to the wider world.
Those present took it in turns to sit in front of a whirring disc and then to marvel as the images of their faces, above, were relayed to the people watching in the next room. The spinning disc system was the inspiration of German Paul Nipkow, but this working model was the culmination of years of work for Baird, who had been in hospital several times for his efforts.
Baird described his invention as "a most dangerous device... liable to burst at any moment and hop around the room with showers of broken glass".
Few at that time could have imagined how the new invention would have such a pervasive influence on the culture of the western world.
Yet while the BBC used Baird's form of television for its inaugural broadcast on 22 August, 1932, Baird's mechanical television was eventually superseded by the electronic version pioneered by Marconi.
The corporation's decision to switch to Marconi's system on 30 January, 1937, was a bitter blow to Baird, whose Baird Television Company struggled as a consequence, but the Scottish inventor continued to explore the possibilities of television.
In 1927, Baird transmitted pictures along 438 miles of telephone cables, from London to Glasgow, and the following year completed the first transatlantic broadcast, from London to New York. He also broadcast the first live television pictures: from the 1931 Epsom Derby.
The inventor created a number of giant television screens, which were shown at theatres in Britain and in Europe, and he experimented with 3D television. In 1928, Baird was the first person to design, build and demonstrate a colour television tube using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends.
His other inventions included a fibre-optic device and an infrared night-vision system. And many believe his work was a key factor in the development of radar.
Always looking for cash to support his inventions, Baird also invented a new kind of thermal sock, a super-strong floor cleaner called Baird's Speedy Cleaner and dabbled in a jam-making enterprise in the West Indies.
Although his electro-mechanical system was superseded by electronic systems, his demonstration of the world's first working television earned him a place in the history books and a claim to be one of Scotland's greatest inventors.
NAME: James Watt
BORN: 1736, Greenock
DIED: 1819, Birmingham
CLAIM TO FAME: Invented the first efficient steam engine
IT WAS the steam engine that powered the industrial revolution in Britain, its noises echoing around the nation's mills and mines and propelling Britannia forward to rule the waves.
And it was a young carpenter's son from Greenock who, while walking on Glasgow Green one Sunday in 1765, came up with a design that revolutionised the steam engine.
Although James Watt, right, did not invent the machine, he did refine the original creation and patented the design that changed the world.
Watt was born in Greenock in 1736 and trained as an instrument-maker in London. He returned to Scotland and worked at Glasgow University, where he met several influential characters, including Joseph Black.
At the university, Watt encountered a model of a Newcomen engine, which was in use in mines. Watt was asked by John Anderson to fix the model and, after seeing how inefficient the design was, he began to consider revisions that would make the engine more useful.
After his Eureka! moment on Glasgow Green, Watt set about creating a prototype. His innovation was to add a condenser on the side of the engine's main cylinder. Before Watt's modifications, the cylinder, which contained the piston, had to be heated when steam was allowed in - and cooled again to condense the steam. He also added a system of valves to send the piston back to the top of the cylinder after descending. Watt's design allowed the steam to condense in a separate chamber, making the engine faster, safer and more efficient.
Watt went in to business with Matthew Boulton, in Birmingham, and made his fortune. His engines were first used in mines and ironworks but later helped to revolutionise the cotton mills, severing their reliance on fast-running streams to turn water wheels and allowing the mills to be built closer to Britain's growing cities.
Watt was granted a patent on his design for 25 years and the inventor later became a fellow of the Royal Society and its Edinburgh equivalent. He went on to design other modifications to steam engines and coined the term "horsepower".
As a tribute to his achievements, the British Association named the unit of electrical power after him - every time you pay your electricity bill or change a light bulb, Watt's name is remembered.
Statues of Watt stand in Westminster Abbey, Edinburgh's Princes Street and George Square in Glasgow. A stone marks the spot on Glasgow Green where Watt had the idea that gave birth to the industrial revolution. Watt's memory was honoured with his inclusion in the hall of Scottish heroes at the Wallace monument, near Stirling, when it was built in the 1860s.
"James Watt was truly 'an original genius' whose engineering talent and innovation had a huge impact on industrial development in Scotland and across the world," says Ann Jones, the archivist at Heriot-Watt University.
"Today Watt remains an inspiration to young scientists and engineers. Our statue of James Watt is at the heart of the Edinburgh campus and each year outstanding students receive Watt Club medals."
The university, which began life as the Edinburgh School of Art in 1821, was renamed the Watt Institution in 1852, so that, as Lord Cockburn, put it, "the memory of Watt may for ever be connected with the promotion, among a class of men to which he himself originally belonged, of those mechanical Arts from which his own usefulness and glory arose".
Dr Graham Clark, interim principal at James Watt College, the largest Scottish further and higher education college, with four campuses in the west of Scotland, says: "James Watt is recognised throughout the world as one of history's most influential figures and as Scotland's finest technologist. Watt's reputation was built on his supreme ability to invent and improve."
NAME: James "Paraffin" Young
BORN: 13 July, 1811, Drygate, Glasgow
DIED: 13 May, 1883, Wemyss Bay, Renfrewshire
CLAIM TO FAME: Invented a method of refining oil from shale, which brought about Scotland's first oil boom
HE BECAME the world's first oil magnate and was a great philanthropist, who used his wealth to support former classmate Dr David Livingstone and to campaign against the slave trade.
Yet Young, who invented a method of refining oil from coal shale, was the son of a carpenter, who began his scientific career at evening classes.
Young, along with Livingstone, was a student at Anderson's Institution in Glasgow, where his natural talents were spotted by the lecturer Professor Thomas Graham, who made him his assistant.
Young became a lecturer, but quit academia in 1848 to work on a new commercial venture, to make fuel from a spring of naphtha, which had been found on an estate in Derbyshire.
Lyon Playfair, a Professor of Chemistry and a former colleague, wrote to him: "It yields about 300 gallons daily. It has the consistency of thin treacle and with one distillation it gives a clear colourless liquid of brilliant illuminating power. Perhaps you could make capital out of this industry."
Young successfully worked out a process for distilling the liquid into oil, which could be used for lighting and lubrication in the cotton mills of Manchester. When the source dried up, Young looked around for another source of raw materials. Word reached the ingenious Scot that the people of Bathgate used 'cannel coal' (candle coal) to light their houses and drew him to West Lothian.
The shale, which is also called torbanite, gave a greater yield of paraffin, used for lamps, left, than any other type when treated with a slow distillation process.
Young patented the process, and in 1851, at Whiteside, Bathgate, he established his commercial oil works.
The shale oil boom transformed the economy and the landscape of West Lothian, leaving huge piles of shale across central Scotland. At its height, there were 40,000 people employed at 120 refineries in the region and three million tons of shale and coal were mined and treated.
In 1865, the inventor formed Young's Paraffin Light and Mineral Oil Company near Bathgate, which sold oil and paraffin lamps around the world and earned him the nickname James 'Paraffin' Young.
His inventions and his business ventures brought him great wealth, but the import of crude oil from the Persian Gulf undermined the Scottish oil industry and after the Second World War, many plants were closed. The last in West Lothian shut in 1962.
But his name lives on, in the James Young School in Livingston and the Young Chair of Technical Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde.
A sycamore tree, planted by David Livingstone, can still be seen in the grounds of Young's former home at Limefield, near West Calder.
