Scotland the brave, the free…and the inventive. It might be a wee, wild country, constantly under threat by its pushy posh neighbor, but Scotland’s pioneering thinkers have shaped the world’s most important technology
When it comes to history, I’ve always felt more drawn to the Mel Brooks approach than Mel Gibson’s, but if Braveheart did one thing, it showed the wider world that there’s more to Scotland than kilts, haggis and a dram of the good stuff.
Growing up in Glasgow, I was in a privileged position to observe some of our more traditional pursuits at first hand – drinking, joking, fighting and being casually racist to our English cousins being among the most popular (perhaps Mel Gibson is a more accurate ambassador than we first realised).
The Scots invented all of the tools of modern marketing, but does inspiration come despite or because of our fiercely independent nature?
Like a fine Single Malt, as I’ve matured I’ve begun to appreciate the true breadth and complexity of my nation’s invention. I was writing about on-demand tech recently and mentioned that it was fellow Scot John Logie Baird who first demonstrated television, one of the first mass-marketing platforms.
But friends, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Scottish minds are behind almost all of the tools of modern marketing and commerce. John McAdam gave us Macadamised roads in the 1820s, so we could shift goods swiftly and efficiently. Scots-born veterinary surgeon John Dunlop backed this up by inventing the pneumatic tyre, which further revolutionised road transport.
Frank Barnwell, for his part, established the fundamentals of aircraft design at the University of Glasgow, while Henry Bell, Robert Wilson and James Harrison took care of passenger steamboats, screw propellors and shipboard refrigeration respectively, paving the way for affordable transport and trade.
The BBC was founded by a Scot – which seems apt when you consider we in fact came up with the four holy pillars of mass marketing – TV, radio (and colour photography), stereotype printing and of course the telephone. What self-respecting marketer would be able to function without them?
I’d be delighted to go on. We could talk about all sorts of things from penicillin to marmalade; the decimal point to the US Navy; even, at the University of St Andrews in 2013, a tractor beam that attracts objects at a microscopic level.
Joking aside, this begs a serious question. What exactly is it that makes us so innovative? What drives our minds to not merely produce but to conjure and invent? The answer could be any number of things from curiosity and interest to simple necessity, driven to invention by our climate’s envious combinations of rain or midges.
Next time you’re considering world domination and a killer marketing strategy, remember that liveliness and an agile mind don’t start in the board room, they come from an interested perspective, from consideration and independent thought. As the traditional toast goes: “Here’s tae us; wha’s like us? Gey few, and they’re a’ deid.”
