13 surprising Scottish innovations - from toasters to raincoats
By The Newsroom
Published 30th Nov 2018, 10:29 BST
Updated 30th Nov 2018, 12:20 BST
An image of the St Andrews flag
Did you have toast for breakfast or cycle to work this morning? If so, you have Scottish inventors to thank.
Most people know that Scottish inventors developed the steam engine, the television and the telephone, but in honour of St Andrew’s Day here are 13 other everyday items we’re betting you didn’t know came from Scotland.
Refrigerators first became widely used in the 1920s. But believe it or not, Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen is credited with inventing the basis for modern refrigeration over 150 years earlier in the mid-1700s.
The worlds first purpose-built portrait gallery was (and still is) located in Edinburgh. Designed by local architect Robert Rowand Anderson, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery was opened in 1889. Artist John Byrne pictured.
Regarded as the father of modern hypnotism, James Braid was a surgeon born in Kinross who was the first to investigate and perform hypnotherapy (both on himself and others) in a scientific capacity in 1841.
Originally known as Johnstons Fluid Beef, this perfect liquid-meat accompaniment to a pie at any football match was invented by Scotsman John Lawson Johnston in 1870.
Edinburgh native James Clerk Maxwell was the brains behind the first coloured photograph in history, which he presented to the world in 1861. Even if it was created with red, blue and green filters on black and white film.
