The Scots didn't invent the wheel!

Imagine a world without

Television; telephones; penicillin; antiseptics; grass collecting lawnmowers; marmalade; tyres or golf.

Some people, maybe, could do without some of these things. Some people have an aversion to marmalade, for instance. Some though this might seem incredible to some readers wouldn't bat an eyelid if there was just green grass without the holes where there are golf links now. But that's just human nature: you can't please everybody all of the time.

All of the above inventions are Scottish. Some of them, without doubt, are major discoveries that have changed the world. Penicillin, for instance, discovered by bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928 has saved more lives than all those lost in all the wars in history. Television has no equal in communicating to and influencing a mass audience so much so, that during any modern revolution one of the first acts is to take control of the national TV station. And the telephone, which was initially dismissed as having no value as 'there would always be an adequate supply of runners to carry messages in London' has transformed the way the planet communicates like no other invention: the telephone network has grown to be the 'biggest machine on the planet'. These are major contributions to modern civilisation. And they're only the tip of the iceberg. New inventions emerge from Scotland's scientists and engineers with an amazing rapidity, some of which bring with them immediately graspable implications like the MRI scanner or the Tuley Tube (the plastic tree shelter than can be spotted along hillsides and motorway verges around the world). Others, like the ground-breaking animal cloning at the Roslin Institute outside Edinburgh, bring with them complex ethical issues as the powers of sciences like bio-technology become ever more fundamental.

The key point here though is that the best Scottish minds have always been worth backing. To underline the point, below is a selected list of some of things that Scotland has contributed to the world things that for the most part we understand. Many of the inventions and discoveries currently being worked on in universities and research institutes across Scotland require, almost by definition, a leap of the imagination, for they are the building blocks of tomorrow's world. But you only have to look at how far we've come to imagine how far we might go. For instance, imagine a world without cancer. Just one thing that Scottish scientists are working on. Imagine what the world would be like without the following all invented in Scotland.

An abbreviated A-Z of Scottish inventions

• Anaesthetics
• Beta-blockers
• Bicycles
• Cash credit
• Colour photography
• Cotton-reel threads
• Continuous electric light
• Criminal finger-printing
• Decimal points
• Fax machines
• Financial services by telephone
• Fountain pens
• Electro-magnetism
• Hollow pipe drainage
• Hypodermic syringes
• Insulin
• Kaleidoscopes
• Lime cordial
• Motor insurance
• Noble gases
• Paraffin
• Pneumatic tyres
• Self adhesive postage stamps
• Quinine
• Radar
• Reflecting telescopes
• Retail banking
• Savings banks
• Tubular steel
• Ultrasound scanners
• Universal standard time
• Vacuum flasks
• Waterproof mackintoshes
• Wave-powered electricity generators
• Whisky