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 be or not to be...""). The young inventor, positioned at the A. Wallis Ellis store in the neighboring community of Mount Pleasant, received and may possibly have transferred his uncle's voice onto a phonautogram, a drawing made on a pen-like recording device that could produce the shapes of sound waves as waveforms onto smoked glass or other media by tracing their vibrations. The next day on August 4 another call was made between Brantford's telegraph office and Melville House, where a large dinner party exchanged "...speech, recitations, songs and instrumental music". To bring telephone signals to Melville House, Alexander Graham