What country has contributed most to the world today?

[dannyboy]

SCOTLAND?

Try taking a Scottish ten pound note to the currency exchange on Silom and see how they treat you, pal.

maybe so, but to get there you might use a bicycle (scottish invention) along a road covered in tarmacadam (scottish invention). it might then start raining so u put on your mackintosh (scottish invention) . when they wont change you money, you phone(scottish invention) a friend to borrow some. go to their and watch some tv (scottish invention). get pissed off that htye wont change your money so book a flight home - get your flight confirmation by fax (scottish invention). go and get the plane, not crash thanks to radar 9scottish invention), get home and discover you have malaria and get terated with quinine (socttish discovery) which may be applied by a hypodermic syringe (scottish invention), etc etc etc :twisted:

Not Scottish at all.... British...

[Stramash]

Scottish first , British second...always!!!

Why is it something good from Scotland, Wales etc, be it a thing or a sportsman, is always British, bit if they from England they are English!!

:twisted:

devolution-revolution-evolution

:twisted:

[BangkokBilly]

Here Danny, just been checking out the Buddha thing and Nepal.

I'm fine with yer man coming from the place you mentioned in Nepal, but when did Nepal become Nepal? I can only find this bit....

"it was not until the reign of the Malla kings from 1200?1769 that Nepal assumed the approximate dimensions of the modern state.

The kingdom of Nepal was unified in 1768 by King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who had fled India following the Moghul conquests of the subcontinent. Under Shah and his successors Nepal's borders expanded as far west as Kashmir and as far east as Sikkim (now part of India). A commercial treaty was signed with Britain in 1792 and again in 1816 after more than a year of hostilities with the British East India Company.

In 1923, Britain recognized the absolute independence of Nepal."

...so when did Nepal get to be Nepal?

If it was part of India when Buddhism came about can't we give the Indians the benefit of the doubt?

You're just trading on technicalities now...but OK...Indian and Nepal...collective effort on Buddhism....

...I'm fantasing about the technical and "approximate dimensions of Nepal". I'm thinking 32 - 24 - 36 would be nice.

[Stramash]

thinking you are getting Nepal and Miss Nepal mixed up Billy!!! :twisted:

[dannyboy]

Scottish first , British second...always!!!

Why is it something good from Scotland, Wales etc, be it a thing or a sportsman, is always British, bit if they from England they are English!!

:twisted:

devolution-revolution-evolution

:twisted:

Just the way it is mate, you should know this by now...

[Stramash]

not for too much longer - independence by 2020 I reckon!!! :twisted:

[Loburt]

SCOTLAND?

Try taking a Scottish ten pound note to the currency exchange on Silom and see how they treat you, pal.

maybe so, but to get there you might use a bicycle (scottish invention) along a road covered in tarmacadam (scottish invention). it might then start raining so u put on your mackintosh (scottish invention) . when they wont change you money, you phone(scottish invention) a friend to borrow some. go to their and watch some tv (scottish invention). get pissed off that htye wont change your money so book a flight home - get your flight confirmation by fax (scottish invention). go and get the plane, not crash thanks to radar 9scottish invention), get home and discover you have malaria and get terated with quinine (socttish discovery) which may be applied by a hypodermic syringe (scottish invention), etc etc etc :twisted:

No one would ride a bicycle on Silom road if they want to live, the roads aren't covered in tarmac, no one wears a mackintosh here. The phone? American invention without dispute. Television? What the Scotsman Baird invented did not use the cathode ray tube, which is what until recently all television used. He used scannable discs, which never caught on. What he made did not use the technology, invented by the American Farsnworth, that is the basis of television. And on and on...

Anyway, impressive (and suspect) as that long list is, Thomas Edison alone probably has more inventions to his name.

[Stramash]

bollox

tarmac used throughout world

many counterclaims to telephone so American without dispute I think now - Bell definitely 1st to get it to work!!!

Doesnt matter what technology ended up in it, Logie Baird is the inventor of tv, later developments do not count as invention

and whats suspect about the list?, or is it just Loburt back to his argumentative self??? :twisted:

[Loburt]

As far as tv goes, if the technology wasn't used (because it wasn't really viable), it doesn't count.

How many people ever had television in their home that used Baird's technology? None.

The television everyone grew up with were the result of the independent work of Farnsworth and his use of the cathode ray tube.

It's like that guy who invented a telephone device a couple of decades before Bell, but it was never used because the quality was too poor. Bell used different materials and ideas. Bell's phone worked. Bell is credited as the inventor. No one remembers whats his name. He was the Baird of telephony and you don't acknowledge him.

Instead, you have Bell on your list. He was of Scottish lineage, but he was American. Sorry, but you can't claim him for Scotland. The telephone was invented in America.

Aside from falsely claiming Bell, the list is bollox because stuff like the paddle wheel, the steam tricycle and coal gas lighting don't mean anything to how we live today. As contributions, they're basically forgotten.

But I will give you that Scotland did have an age where it produced many technological innovations for those times and Scots have every right to be proud of that.

Oh, and YOU aren't argumentative Iain? Oh no, of course not.

[Stramash]

Moi Loburt??? Argumentative?? Never!! Lol. Ok, some of the inventions are outdated, but plenty relevant.

anyway, couple of points;

Bell American??? How do you work that out???

He was born in Edinburgh, went to same school as myself (though obviously at a different time lol) and didnt emigrate till he was 23. So he is Scottish by birth, education and heritage. Nuff said.

Tv- yes many people developed it(same as phone) but Logie Baird first to make it work. And his system was NEVER used then??

Ok,

"From 1929 to 1932, the BBC transmitters were used to broadcast television programmes using the 30-line Baird system, and from 1932-35, the BBC also produced the programmes in their own studio at 16 Portland Place. In November 1936, the BBC began alternating Baird 240-line transmissions with EMI's electronic scanning system which had recently been improved to 405-lines after a merger with Marconi. The BBC ceased broadcasts with the Baird system in February 1937, due mostly to the immobility of the Baird system's cameras."

BBC must have just imagined using the Baird sytem for 8 years then??!!

As to inventions no longer relevant let's have a look shall we at which might still be relevant today (and I wont count the institutions started by Scotsmen such as US Navy, Bank of England etc etc)

Macadam roads (tarmacadam): John Loudon MacAdam (1756-1836)

The pedal bicycle: Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1813-1878)

The pneumatic tyre: Robert William Thomson and John Boyd Dunlop (1822-1873)

The speedometer: Sir Keith Elphinstone (1864-1944)

Tubular steel: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)

Dock design: John Rennie (1761-1821)

Wave-powered electricity generator: Stephen Salter in 1977

The adhesive postage stamp and the postmark: James Chalmers (1782-1853)

The post office

Universal Standard Time: Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915)

The telephone: Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

The teleprinter: Frederick G. Creed (1871-1957)

The television: John Logie Baird (1888-1946)

Radar: Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973)

Fax Machine - Alexander Bain

Logarithms: John Napier (1550-1617)

The theory of electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Identifying the nucleus in living cells: Robert Brown (1773-1858)

The kelvin SI unit of temperature: William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)

Devising the diagramatic system of representing chemical bonds: Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922)

Criminal fingerprinting: Henry Faulds (1843-1930)

The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916)

The ultrasound scanner: Ian Donald (1910-1987)

The MRI body scanner: John Mallard in 1980

The first cloned mammal (Dolly the Sheep): The Roslin Institute research centre in 1996

Seismometer - James David Forbes

Cycling, invention of the pedal-cycle

Football, The first known rules of the game were published in Scotland.Edinburgh was home to the worlds first club The Edinburgh Foot Ball Club.

Golf

Medical Innovations;

Discovering quinine as the cure for malaria: George Cleghorn (1716-1794)

Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870)

The hypodermic syringe: Alexander Wood (1817-1884)

Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932)

Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce (1855-1931)

Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman (1865-1926)

Discovering insulin: John J R Macleod (1876-1935) with others

Penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)

Discovering an effective tuberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s

Primary creator of the artificial kidney (Professor Kenneth Lowe - Later Queen's physician in Scotland)

Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964

Glasgow Coma Scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974)

Household Innovations

The piano with footpedals: John Broadwood (1732-1812)

The waterproof macintosh: Charles Macintosh (1766-1843)

The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster (1781-1868)

The modern lawnmower: Alexander Shanks (1801-1845)

Paraffin: James Young (1811-1883)

The fountain pen: Robert Thomson (1822-1873)

Cotton-reel thread: J & J Clark of Paisley

Electric clock - Alexander Bain

The Ghillie suit

Colour photography

Not to mention marmalade, the monorail and the cable car!!!!

Now I am sorry, but to me, every one of those item are VERY relevant today, and indeed would say that many are essential to various aspects of life and health. Have dropped all the crap about 'steam powered triccyles' since we dont really see many of those on the roads (though with the price of oil,perhaps it is time for a comeback lol!!)

And I havent even started on the fact that Scotland had first flush toilets!!!

And do hope you take it all as friendly banter Lo, wouldnt like it to get to the nastiness certain other TF'ers end up in!!

[Kitschiguy]

Here Danny, just been checking out the Buddha thing and Nepal.

I'm fine with yer man coming from the place you mentioned in Nepal, but when did Nepal become Nepal? I can only find this bit....

"it was not until the reign of the Malla kings from 1200?1769 that Nepal assumed the approximate dimensions of the modern state.

The kingdom of Nepal was unified in 1768 by King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who had fled India following the Moghul conquests of the subcontinent. Under Shah and his successors Nepal's borders expanded as far west as Kashmir and as far east as Sikkim (now part of India). A commercial treaty was signed with Britain in 1792 and again in 1816 after more than a year of hostilities with the British East India Company.

In 1923, Britain recognized the absolute independence of Nepal."

...so when did Nepal get to be Nepal?

If it was part of India when Buddhism came about can't we give the Indians the benefit of the doubt?

Good question and it's kind of hard to say. It hasn't really got anything to do with when borders where formed since various ethnicities and languages have always and still do transcend borders in the region.

The Buddhas family ruled the kapilavastu Kingdom which is in present-day Nepal near the Indian border. They spoke Indo-Aryan languages, Sanskrit initially (the canonical texts/Tripitaka are written in Pali which is Indo-Aryan) and then Magadhi Something or other after it died out. Nepalese is a Tibeto-Burman language. I think people only spoke these languages in Northern Nepal.

This topic is irrelevant to Buddhists but I would say that Buddha was ethnically Indian - for the purpose of this topic anyway. I would also say that the teaching and learning of Buddhism can be mostly attributed to India. The first Buddhist university was in Sarnath in India (I think) this is where Buddha delivered the first sermon and where the Sangha was formed, he gained enlightenment in Bodhi Gaya in India and and preached his whole life in this region.

[dannyboy]

Here Danny, just been checking out the Buddha thing and Nepal.

I'm fine with yer man coming from the place you mentioned in Nepal, but when did Nepal become Nepal? I can only find this bit....

"it was not until the reign of the Malla kings from 1200?1769 that Nepal assumed the approximate dimensions of the modern state.

The kingdom of Nepal was unified in 1768 by King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who had fled India following the Moghul conquests of the subcontinent. Under Shah and his successors Nepal's borders expanded as far west as Kashmir and as far east as Sikkim (now part of India). A commercial treaty was signed with Britain in 1792 and again in 1816 after more than a year of hostilities with the British East India Company.

In 1923, Britain recognized the absolute independence of Nepal."

...so when did Nepal get to be Nepal?

If it was part of India when Buddhism came about can't we give the Indians the benefit of the doubt?

Good question and it's kind of hard to say. It hasn't really got anything to do with when borders where formed since various ethnicities and languages have always and still do transcend borders in the region.

The Buddhas family ruled the kapilavastu Kingdom which is in present-day Nepal near the Indian border. They spoke Indo-Aryan languages, Sanskrit initially (the canonical texts/Tripitaka are written in Pali which is Indo-Aryan) and then Magadhi Something or other after it died out. Nepalese is a Tibeto-Burman language. I think people only spoke these languages in Northern Nepal.

This topic is irrelevant to Buddhists but I would say that Buddha was ethnically Indian - for the purpose of this topic anyway. I would also say that the teaching and learning of Buddhism can be mostly attributed to India. The first Buddhist university was in Sarnath in India (I think) this is where Buddha delivered the first sermon and where the Sangha was formed, he gained enlightenment in Bodhi Gaya in India and and preached his whole life in this region.

OK, OK, OK! .....my bad....

[R.Win]

while (for once) blowhard Pom nationalistas DO have the strongest case IMO (industrial revolution, soccer football, Ricky Gervais...) , the game is rigged by the time frame.

make it 3,000 years and China's looking pretty good, edging out Rome and the Greek City-states...

I don't agree on this one. If we're talking roughly 200 years and the world we are living in "today", then I think it's the United States.

Because of its cultural, financial, political and economic contributions its influence worldwide is greater today.

Even when it comes to something such as the industrial revolution, without innovations such as Henry Ford's assembly line, the fruits of that revolution may not have benefited the masses to the degree it has.

This is in no way meant to disparage the many and great contributions of England or other countries.

Nor should this be expected to last far into the future, as many other countries are developing rapidly and making their own important contributions to shaping the world we live in.

I have to agree with Loburt. I don't know if the U.S. made the biggest contribution but they did have the biggest impact. Just look at movies, series, music, coca cola, hamburgers etc. But since their involvement in wars etc. they might've made the biggest contribution as well. Some don't agree on their ways to protect freedom, but I'm sure the world might've looked a lot worse without them. Hell, the world might've had a whole lot more of native german language speakers... that would've sucked :?

[zeusbheld]

dont hin we are counting just by how many peopel there are though i will agree that China makes biggest contribution to profitability of birthday card and cake industry!!! :twisted:

china also had fireworks, pasta, those cool-lookin paper lanterns, and arguably the first real novel... not to mention wu xia movies, everyone loves seeing swordsmen fly, don't they?

[zeusbheld]

Actually didn't China give us the plaque,

Now THAT changed the world.

i suspect plaque is something that ALL animals with teeth struggle against, not just the Chinese... Poms aren't known for their excellent teeth, inci... um... dental-ly.

[zeusbheld]

anyway, know you will all say I am biased, but considering the size, I think the country that has contributed the most is...

Scotland!!!

Aye right I hear you say, deep fried mars bars??? No way!! But read on, and think of how many things in this list you use every day or that are part of the world around us, then come back and say I am talking male cow poop!!

Scotland?s contributions to the world;

Gas mask: James Gregory (1638-1675)

steam car (steam engine): William Murdoch (1754-1839)

Macadam roads (tarmacadam): John Loudon MacAdam (1756-1836)

Driving on the left: Determined by a Scottish-inspired Act of Parliament in 1772

The pedal bicycle: Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1813-1878)

The pneumatic tyre: Robert William Thomson and John Boyd Dunlop (1822-1873)

The overhead valve engine: David Dunbar Buick (1854-1929)

The speedometer: Sir Keith Elphinstone (1864-1944)

The motor lorry: John Yule in 1870

The steam tricycle: Andrew Lawson in 1895

Tubular steel: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)

Dock design: John Rennie (1761-1821)

The patent slip for docking vessels: Thomas Morton (1781-1832)

Condensing steam engine & improvements: James Watt (1736-1819)

Coal-gas lighting: William Murdock (1754-1839)

Carbon brushes for dynamos: George Forbes (1849-1936)

Wave-powered electricity generator: Stephen Salter in 1977

The steamship paddle wheel: Patrick Miller (1731-1815)

The steam boat: William Symington (1763-1831)

Europe's first passenger steamboat: Henry Bell (1767-1830)

The first iron-hulled steamship: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)

The first practical screw propeller: Robert Wilson (1803-1882) [edit] Heavy Industry Innovations

The steam hammer: James Nasmyth (1808-1890)

Wire rope: Robert Stirling Newall (1812-1889)

Cordite - Sir James Dewar, Sir Frederick Abel

Print stereotyping: William Ged (1690-1749)

The balloon post: John Anderson (1726-1796)

The adhesive postage stamp and the postmark: James Chalmers (1782-1853)

The post office

The mail-van service

Universal Standard Time: Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915)

Light signalling between ships: Admiral Philip H. Colomb (1831-1899)

The telephone: Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

The teleprinter: Frederick G. Creed (1871-1957)

The television: John Logie Baird (1888-1946)

Radar: Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973)

Fax Machine - Alexander Bain

Radio (underlying principles) - James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Some Scottish publishing firsts:

The first book translated from English into a foreign language

The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768-81)

The first English textbook on surgery (1597)

The first modern pharmacopaedia, the Materia Medica Catalogue (1776)

The first textbook on Newtonian science

The first colour newspaper advertisement

Others;

Logarithms: John Napier (1550-1617)

The theory of electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Identifying the nucleus in living cells: Robert Brown (1773-1858)

The kelvin SI unit of temperature: William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)

Devising the diagramatic system of representing chemical bonds: Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922)

Criminal fingerprinting: Henry Faulds (1843-1930)

The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916)

The ultrasound scanner: Ian Donald (1910-1987)

The MRI body scanner: John Mallard in 1980

The first cloned mammal (Dolly the Sheep): The Roslin Institute research centre in 1996

Seismometer - James David Forbes

Sports innovations

Scots have been instrumental in the invention and early development of several sports:

several modern athletics events, notably the shot put and the hammer throw, derive from Highland Games events

Curling

Cycling, invention of the pedal-cycle

Football, The first known rules of the game were published in Scotland.Edinburgh was home to the worlds first club The Edinburgh Foot Ball Club.

Golf

Shinty

Basketball (well James Naismith was born in Canada but his aprents were Scottish!!)

Medical Innovations;

Devising the cure for scurvy: James Lind (1716-1794)

Discovering quinine as the cure for malaria: George Cleghorn (1716-1794)

Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870)

The hypodermic syringe: Alexander Wood (1817-1884)

Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932)

Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce (1855-1931)

Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman (1865-1926)

Discovering insulin: John J R Macleod (1876-1935) with others

Penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)

Discovering an effective tuberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s

Primary creator of the artificial kidney (Professor Kenneth Lowe - Later Queen's physician in Scotland)

Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964

Glasgow Coma Scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974)

Household Innovations

The Dewar Flask: Sir James Dewar (1847-1932)

The piano with footpedals: John Broadwood (1732-1812)

The waterproof macintosh: Charles Macintosh (1766-1843)

The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster (1781-1868)

The modern lawnmower: Alexander Shanks (1801-1845)

The Lucifer friction match: Sir Isaac Holden (1807-1897){

Paraffin: James Young (1811-1883)

The fountain pen: Robert Thomson (1822-1873)

Cotton-reel thread: J & J Clark of Paisley

Lime Cordial: Lachlan Rose in 1867

Bovril beef extract: John Lawson Johnston in 1874

The life ring, or personal flotation device: Captain Ward in 1854

Electric clock - Alexander Bain

The Ghillie suit

Economist Adam Smith; Smith was born in 1723, hailing from Kirkcaldy, a Scottish town north of Edinburgh; the 18th century Scot considered to be the father of modern economics; Smith's ``An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which argued that minimal government interference in commerce would promote human welfare and alleviate poverty, was published in 1776. He is the first Scotsman to appear on the central bank's currency in England, replacing Elgar's image in the next few years on as many as 1 billion notes.

Miscellaneous innovations

The digestive biscuit, invented by McVitie's in Edinburgh in 1892 by Alexander Grant.

Boys' Brigade

Bank of England

Bank of Scotland

Bank of France

Colour photography

Not to mention marmalade, the US Navy , the monorail and the cable car!!!!

Or on a darker note (allegedley) The Klu Klux Klan!!

bring it on the rest of the world!!

:twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

you had me at haggis and single-malt scotch.

[zeusbheld]

SCOTLAND?

Try taking a Scottish ten pound note to the currency exchange on Silom and see how they treat you, pal.

maybe so, but to get there you might use a bicycle (scottish invention) along a road covered in tarmacadam (scottish invention). it might then start raining so u put on your mackintosh (scottish invention) . when they wont change you money, you phone(scottish invention) a friend to borrow some. go to their and watch some tv (scottish invention). get pissed off that htye wont change your money so book a flight home - get your flight confirmation by fax (scottish invention). go and get the plane, not crash thanks to radar 9scottish invention), get home and discover you have malaria and get terated with quinine (socttish discovery) which may be applied by a hypodermic syringe (scottish invention), etc etc etc :twisted:

No one would ride a bicycle on Silom road if they want to live, the roads aren't covered in tarmac, no one wears a mackintosh here. The phone? American invention without dispute. Television? What the Scotsman Baird invented did not use the cathode ray tube, which is what until recently all television used. He used scannable discs, which never caught on. What he made did not use the technology, invented by the American Farsnworth, that is the basis of television. And on and on...

Anyway, impressive (and suspect) as that long list is, Thomas Edison alone probably has more inventions to his name.

yeah but Edison's single-malt whiskeys were bilge-water.

[eagle]

SCOTLAND?

Try taking a Scottish ten pound note to the currency exchange on Silom and see how they treat you, pal.

maybe so, but to get there you might use a bicycle (scottish invention) along a road covered in tarmacadam (scottish invention). it might then start raining so u put on your mackintosh (scottish invention) . when they wont change you money, you phone(scottish invention) a friend to borrow some. go to their and watch some tv (scottish invention). get pissed off that htye wont change your money so book a flight home - get your flight confirmation by fax (scottish invention). go and get the plane, not crash thanks to radar 9scottish invention), get home and discover you have malaria and get terated with quinine (socttish discovery) which may be applied by a hypodermic syringe (scottish invention), etc etc etc :twisted:

No one would ride a bicycle on Silom road if they want to live, the roads aren't covered in tarmac, no one wears a mackintosh here. The phone? American invention without dispute. Television? What the Scotsman Baird invented did not use the cathode ray tube, which is what until recently all television used. He used scannable discs, which never caught on. What he made did not use the technology, invented by the American Farsnworth, that is the basis of television. And on and on...

Anyway, impressive (and suspect) as that long list is, Thomas Edison alone probably has more inventions to his name.

yeah but Edison's single-malt whiskeys were bilge-water.[/quot

Yea but after Tesla got done with him he couldn't afford the good stuff :

is the bulb icon Edisons or Teslas ?idea:

[zeusbheld]

Yea but after Tesla got done with him he couldn't afford the good stuff :

is the bulb icon Edisons or Teslas ?idea:

nikola was more of a vodka guy. to my knowledge, he never made a single-malt.

[eagle]

Yea but after Tesla got done with him he couldn't afford the good stuff :

is the bulb icon Edisons or Teslas ?idea:

nikola was more of a vodka guy. to my knowledge, he never made a single-malt.

I don't think he drank alcohol , this from a man who challenged Einstien's theory of relativity ........

[zeusbheld]

Yea but after Tesla got done with him he couldn't afford the good stuff :

is the bulb icon Edisons or Teslas ?idea:

nikola was more of a vodka guy. to my knowledge, he never made a single-malt.

I don't think he drank alcohol , this from a man who challenged Einstien's theory of relativity ........

ah. so he dropped acid. drug of choice for physicists and cosmologists, i hear.

[eagle]

Yea but after Tesla got done with him he couldn't afford the good stuff :

is the bulb icon Edisons or Teslas ?idea:

nikola was more of a vodka guy. to my knowledge, he never made a single-malt.

I don't think he drank alcohol , this from a man who challenged Einstien's theory of relativity ........

ah. so he dropped acid. drug of choice for physicists and cosmologists, i hear.

Well he died in 43 and LSD was invented in 38 so its possible and could account for the increasingly excentric behavior in his last years ?

[GoldMember]

anyway, know you will all say I am biased, but considering the size, I think the country that has contributed the most is...

Scotland!!!

Aye right I hear you say, deep fried mars bars??? No way!! But read on, and think of how many things in this list you use every day or that are part of the world around us, then come back and say I am talking male cow poop!!

Scotland?s contributions to the world;

Gas mask: James Gregory (1638-1675)

steam car (steam engine): William Murdoch (1754-1839)

Macadam roads (tarmacadam): John Loudon MacAdam (1756-1836)

Driving on the left: Determined by a Scottish-inspired Act of Parliament in 1772

The pedal bicycle: Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1813-1878)

The pneumatic tyre: Robert William Thomson and John Boyd Dunlop (1822-1873)

The overhead valve engine: David Dunbar Buick (1854-1929)

The speedometer: Sir Keith Elphinstone (1864-1944)

The motor lorry: John Yule in 1870

The steam tricycle: Andrew Lawson in 1895

Tubular steel: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)

Dock design: John Rennie (1761-1821)

The patent slip for docking vessels: Thomas Morton (1781-1832)

Condensing steam engine & improvements: James Watt (1736-1819)

Coal-gas lighting: William Murdock (1754-1839)

Carbon brushes for dynamos: George Forbes (1849-1936)

Wave-powered electricity generator: Stephen Salter in 1977

The steamship paddle wheel: Patrick Miller (1731-1815)

The steam boat: William Symington (1763-1831)

Europe's first passenger steamboat: Henry Bell (1767-1830)

The first iron-hulled steamship: Sir William Fairbairn (1789-1874)

The first practical screw propeller: Robert Wilson (1803-1882) [edit] Heavy Industry Innovations

The steam hammer: James Nasmyth (1808-1890)

Wire rope: Robert Stirling Newall (1812-1889)

Cordite - Sir James Dewar, Sir Frederick Abel

Print stereotyping: William Ged (1690-1749)

The balloon post: John Anderson (1726-1796)

The adhesive postage stamp and the postmark: James Chalmers (1782-1853)

The post office

The mail-van service

Universal Standard Time: Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915)

Light signalling between ships: Admiral Philip H. Colomb (1831-1899)

The telephone: Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

The teleprinter: Frederick G. Creed (1871-1957)

The television: John Logie Baird (1888-1946)

Radar: Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973)

Fax Machine - Alexander Bain

Radio (underlying principles) - James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Some Scottish publishing firsts:

The first book translated from English into a foreign language

The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768-81)

The first English textbook on surgery (1597)

The first modern pharmacopaedia, the Materia Medica Catalogue (1776)

The first textbook on Newtonian science

The first colour newspaper advertisement

Others;

Logarithms: John Napier (1550-1617)

The theory of electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Identifying the nucleus in living cells: Robert Brown (1773-1858)

The kelvin SI unit of temperature: William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)

Devising the diagramatic system of representing chemical bonds: Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922)

Criminal fingerprinting: Henry Faulds (1843-1930)

The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916)

The ultrasound scanner: Ian Donald (1910-1987)

The MRI body scanner: John Mallard in 1980

The first cloned mammal (Dolly the Sheep): The Roslin Institute research centre in 1996

Seismometer - James David Forbes

Sports innovations

Scots have been instrumental in the invention and early development of several sports:

several modern athletics events, notably the shot put and the hammer throw, derive from Highland Games events

Curling

Cycling, invention of the pedal-cycle

Football, The first known rules of the game were published in Scotland.Edinburgh was home to the worlds first club The Edinburgh Foot Ball Club.

Golf

Shinty

Basketball (well James Naismith was born in Canada but his aprents were Scottish!!)

Medical Innovations;

Devising the cure for scurvy: James Lind (1716-1794)

Discovering quinine as the cure for malaria: George Cleghorn (1716-1794)

Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870)

The hypodermic syringe: Alexander Wood (1817-1884)

Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932)

Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce (1855-1931)

Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman (1865-1926)

Discovering insulin: John J R Macleod (1876-1935) with others

Penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)

Discovering an effective tuberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s

Primary creator of the artificial kidney (Professor Kenneth Lowe - Later Queen's physician in Scotland)

Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964

Glasgow Coma Scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974)

Household Innovations

The Dewar Flask: Sir James Dewar (1847-1932)

The piano with footpedals: John Broadwood (1732-1812)

The waterproof macintosh: Charles Macintosh (1766-1843)

The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster (1781-1868)

The modern lawnmower: Alexander Shanks (1801-1845)

The Lucifer friction match: Sir Isaac Holden (1807-1897){

Paraffin: James Young (1811-1883)

The fountain pen: Robert Thomson (1822-1873)

Cotton-reel thread: J & J Clark of Paisley

Lime Cordial: Lachlan Rose in 1867

Bovril beef extract: John Lawson Johnston in 1874

The life ring, or personal flotation device: Captain Ward in 1854

Electric clock - Alexander Bain

The Ghillie suit

Economist Adam Smith; Smith was born in 1723, hailing from Kirkcaldy, a Scottish town north of Edinburgh; the 18th century Scot considered to be the father of modern economics; Smith's ``An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which argued that minimal government interference in commerce would promote human welfare and alleviate poverty, was published in 1776. He is the first Scotsman to appear on the central bank's currency in England, replacing Elgar's image in the next few years on as many as 1 billion notes.

Miscellaneous innovations

The digestive biscuit, invented by McVitie's in Edinburgh in 1892 by Alexander Grant.

Boys' Brigade

Bank of England

Bank of Scotland

Bank of France

Colour photography

Not to mention marmalade, the US Navy , the monorail and the cable car!!!!

Or on a darker note (allegedley) The Klu Klux Klan!!

bring it on the rest of the world!!

:twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

you had me at haggis and single-malt scotch.

No mention though of Scotlands most famous export....the McTrumps .The canny tribe of property developers lead by Chieftain Donald and distinguishable by their very erm..distinctive hair styling and their penchant for giving East European totty a good knobbin.

[Stramash]

No mention though of Scotlands most famous export....the McTrumps .The canny tribe of property developers lead by Chieftain Donald and distinguishable by their very erm..distinctive hair styling and their penchant for giving East European totty a good knobbin.

Yes that Scottish stuff's all very well and all, but where would we be without the Great British jigsaw puzzle.

out in the sunshine playing with the other kids?? :twisted: