Business and the Economy

Inventive? Wha's like us?

Ask any classroom full of children anywhere in the world who invented the television or the telephone and the names of John Logie Baird and Alexander Graham Bell will surely come tumbling out. But what about Lord Kelvin, the founding father of modern physics? Or Lord Reith, the first ever director general of the BBC? Click here to find out more about these pioneering Scotsmen.

Andrew Carnegie, billionaire and founding father of modern philanthropy, is often thought of as being as American as apple pie. He was, in fact, as Scottish as Irn Bru: born in Dunfermline, the son of a weaver, he was 13 when he crossed the Atlantic to amass the fortune which would eventually allow him to do so much good.

It was another Scotsman, John McLeod, who invented insulin, the drug that has transformed the lives of millions of diabetes sufferers around the world? McLeod's work earned him the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1923.

As good today as we've always been

But Scotland's achievements in these areas are not confined to the pages of the history books. More recently, for instance, there was 6LL3, more famously known as Dolly the Sheep, the world's first ever cloned mammal, who was developed at Roslin Institute in Midlothian. Not forgetting other Scottish inventions like the ATM cash machine, RADAR, fingerprinting, the ultrasound and MRI scanners, as well as the trust and the overdraft, the very foundations of modern banking and business.

Or in medicine: a £50 million project was announced earlier this year to combine Scottish knowledge and American investment in the Translational Medicine Research Collaboration. Based in Scotland the new programme will pool the knowledge of our universities and health boards to analyse the medical records of thousands of patients in order to create new treatments tailored to individual patient needs. These new 'personalised drugs' are expected to revolutionise treatment for conditions like diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

Black gold and green power

Thanks to its reserves of North Sea Oil and Gas, Scotland has long been a major player in the international energy markets. However, questions about the sustainability of our natural resources and fears of carbon emissions are forcing us to look increasingly towards developing the world's renewable energy sources of wind and sea power. And here Scotland, with a declared target of providing 40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, again leads the way.

Thanks to its northerly latitude and complex marine geology Scotland is a natural centre for wind and wave energy generation: Brian the sea snail, a 30 tonne turbine and the world's first free standing tidal energy system, was developed at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and first put into trials off the coast of Orkney. Inverness-based Wavegen are a leader in the field of wave energy and developed the world's first commercial scale, grid-connected wave power station on Islay. The Isle of Lewis is home to Cambrian Engineering, who supply 95% of the towers used in the UK’s wind farms, while, on Kintyre Vestas-Celtic is one of the UK's largest wind turbine manufacturers, employing 186 people.

In fact, things come full circle. Last year the biannual Andrew Carnegie Medal for Philanthropy was won by a Scot! Sir Tom Farmer, the Edinburgh tycoon behind the Kwik-Fit tyre and exhaust chain and one of Scotland's richest men, was awarded the honour for the millions he has donated to charitable causes over the years. Another example of a Scottish businessman's success improving the economy and providing opportunities for his fellow man. Andrew Carnegie would surely have approved. . . .

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