Scottish inventions and discoveries solely to the subject, as well as scores of websites listing Scottish inventions and discoveries with varying degrees of science. Even before the Industrial Revolution, Scots have been at the forefront of innovation and discovery across a wide range of spheres. Some of the most significant products of Scottish ingenuity include James Watt's steam engine, improving on that of Thomas Newcomen, the bicycle, macadamisation (not to be confused with tarmac or tarmacadam), Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the first practical telephone, John Logie Baird's invention of television, Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin and insulin. The following is a list of
Invention of the telephone audaciously "bought up" and "cleaned up" the complete supply of stovepipe wire in Brantford. With the help of two of his parents' neighbours, he tacked the stovepipe wire some 400 metres (a quarter mile) along the top of fence posts from his parents' home to a junction point on the telegraph line to the neighbouring community of Mount Pleasant, which joined it to the Dominion Telegraph office in Brantford, Ontario. The third and most important test was the world's first true long-distance telephone call, placed between Brantford and Paris, Ontario on August 10, 1876. For that long-distance call Alexander Graham