Is there anything the Scots didn’t invent?

This post is written for anyone who is fortunate enough to be married to a Scotsman.

I suppose it is relevant if you are married to a Scotswoman, but I have to say I have never heard a Scottish woman brag that television was invented by a fellow countryman.

Or that Tarmac was invented by a Scot. And the steam engine. Flush toilets. The bicycle. Penicillin. Radar. Motion pictures. The list goes on.

It’s a guy thing.

I think there is a class that all Scottish lads take when they are about to leave school. It is titled: Famous Scottish inventors: How to woo young foreign women.” To a Scotsman, “foreign” means born outside of Scotland, and that includes England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

When I was dating my future husband, he would casually weave in these facts about Scottish ingenuity into our conversations.

Once, when we were talking about phones, he coolly said “and did you know that the telephone was invented by a Scotsman?”

“Of course it was,” I said. I didn’t want to burst his bubble but I was sure I was taught the telephone was invented in America. OK, Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, but he left Scotland when he was 18 and immigrated to the new world. Then he invented the telephone. You know the story “Watson, come here, I want to talk with you.” He was in Boston. I clearly remember that.

The clincher was when my future husband told me about the Scottish connection with Calculus. Calculus was my nemesis in university — I failed it the first time, failed it the second time, and eventually got a passing grade after lots of tutoring and a professor that felt sorry for me when I told him I would not be able to go on to graduate school without passing his class.

Maybe, I thought, if I married a Scotsman, the “can’t pass calculus” gene won’t be passed down to my children.

Only time will tell on this one, though my eldest is showing promise.

In researching this post, I can across a web site called Scottish inventions. It was written by one of those lads that took the course. It lists more than 100 Scottish claimed inventions, including adhesive postage stamps.

Now THAT is something to be proud of. I guess if you grew up in a country that batters and fries Mars bars and mixes chopped lamb innards with oatmeal and calls it a national dish, then why not boast about inventing a stamp you need to lick?!