Great Scots of Note: Scotland on Britannia

Gateway to the British Isles since 1996

Scots Who Made A Difference

by Peter N. Williams, Ph.D.
© 2007 Britannia.com

B
BARTHOLOMEW, JOHN GEORGE (1860-1920)
British map-making (and consequently, map-making in every other modern nation) owes a great deal to the work of Edinburgh-born John George Bartholomew, cartographer and map and atlas publisher. He greatly improved the standards of British cartography (already among the best in the world at the time) and introduced into Britain the use of contours and systematic color layering to show relief. He was particularly instrumental in perfecting the technical processes involved in map production, publishing major atlases of England, Wales and Scotland. Bartholomew's great work The Times Survey Atlas of the World was completed the year after his death by his son John Bartholomew, also editor of the Times Atlas of the World published in 1955.

BEATON, DAVID (1494-1546)
Bishop David Beaton was murdered for his anti-Protestant stance at St. Andrews in 1546 following his cruel burning at the stake of the popular reformer George Wishart. The last words spoken by the Cardinal were "Fie, Fie, All is gone" as he was stabbed to death and his body thrown from a window of his castle at St. Andrews by a group of Protestant leaders.

To many, Beaton can thus be considered a martyr, but though he vigorously opposed the Scottish Reformation, his efforts were ultimately to prove futile. Archbishop of St. Andrew's and papal legate, Beaton also had persuaded King James V against following the lead of Henry VIII of England in his break from Rome.

As chancellor and virtual ruler of Scotland when James Hamilton, earl of Arran decided to switch from his pro-English position, Beaton initiated the persecution of Protestants that led to his downfall. His influence extended greatly in other matters, too, for he forbade the proposed marriage of Mary Stuart to the future King Edward VI of England, frustrating Henry's plan to subjugate Scotland and thus keeping alive the seeds of the nationalist movement that is only coming to full flower in the 1990's.

BEATTIE, JAMES (1735-1803)
The name of James Beattie, poet and essayist, is not as well known as those of many he influenced, including Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns and Lord Byron. Beattie was born in Laurencekirk, Kincardine. His poem The Minstrel (1771) was one of the first works of the so-called Romantic Movement in English literature. It followed an essay in which his romantic attitude toward nature strongly opposed the rationalism of fellow Scot David Hume. The Minstrel caused a sensation in literary circles; as a defence of sensitivity, the influence of nature and Christianity itself, it made the author famous, respected and admired throughout Britain. It may not be read much today, but its influence lived on long after its publication, to be greatly magnified in the Romantic movement that it helped spawn.

BAILLIE, ROBERT (1599-1662)
Another Robert Baillie did not meet so grim a fate, yet his influence upon subsequent Scottish religious affairs was probably greater than that of his unfortunate namesake. Presbyterian minister and scholar, this Robert Baillie was the leader of the movement to reject the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer in 1637, and by rejecting the book, so rejected the Church (and its head, the King of England). Baillie was an important member of the Glasgow Assembly in 1638 when the Church of Scotland broke away permanently from English Episcopacy. He thus played an important part in the formation of that particular Scottish character that has such great pride in its independent spirit.

BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM (1847-1922)
Even as late as 1922, when Alexander Graham Bell was laid to rest in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, the world may not have been fully aware of what he had brought forth for the future benefit of mankind. It is inconceivable for us to contemplate a world without the telephone, Bell's superb invention, for which he was granted a patent in 1876 and for which the whole world owes him an absolutely unpayable gratitude.

The remarkable inventor and teacher of the deaf was born at 16 South Charlotte St., Edinburgh but was taken to live at 3 Hope St. when he was 9 months old. His father Melivell was a teacher of speech, the author of Standard Elocutionist, reprinted countless times, whose other textbooks on speech and phonetics were widely used in schools and colleges throughout the English-speaking world. In 1862, Melivell authored "Visible Speech," to be used for pronouncing words in all languages, but it was found that the symbols it employed could be used to teach the deaf. His wife, Eliza had begun to lose her hearing at age 12. After the death of two sons, the family moved to Canada to escape the tuberculosis then rampant in their native Edinburgh.

In 1871, Alexander went to Boston to teach at Sarah Fuller's School for the Deaf (later the world-famous Horace Mann School). In 1872, he opened his own School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech to utilize the "oral" method of teaching the deaf, rather than the more popular sign language. After accepting a position at Boston University, he began his experiments with electricity to send sound across the wires, taking on as his assistant an expert in electricity, Mr. Thomas A. Watson. In 1873, with financial backing from Gardiner Hubbard and Tom Sanders, he formed the Bell Patent Association.

The idea of talking over a wire was not new, and there had been many previous attempts, with some small measures of success achieved by Borseul in France, Reis in Germany and Elisha Gray in the United States. Bell's success however came through his novel ideas that electricity could be generated to "undulate' or vary in intensity as sound waves and that current could somehow be "shaped" by a practical transmitter. Bell also conceived of the idea that a single membrane or diaphragm could act like the human ear to gather the complexities of sound or speech in the air and through its vibration bring about the corresponding variations in the current flowing in the wire.

In the summer of 1874, visiting his father at Brantford, Bell conceived the idea that telegraphing speech was theoretically possible by means of the induced currents in the coil of an electromagnet. He was encouraged by Joseph Henry, considered the dean of American electrical scientists for his work with electromagnetic induction, whom Bell visited at the Smithsonian Institution. The big breakthrough came on June 2, 1875.

When Bell and Watson were testing their harmonic telegraph, one of Watson's reeds, screwed down too tightly, froze to the electromagnet. Watson plucked it to free it. Bell, at the other end of the line, had a receiver reed pressed to his ear and heard the twang of the plucked reed. Instead of the expected usual whine of the intermittent battery current, he heard a tone with some overtones. Running to the other room, he shouted "Watson, what did you do then? Don't change anything. Let me see."

It became apparent that the reed, too tight to send intermittent current, had sent an induced, undulating current over the line, one that would vary in intensity as the air varies in density when sound passes through it. The receiving reed had acted as a diaphragm enabling Bell to detect the sound. The current had proved strong enough to be of practical use. One day later, Bell was able to transmit his own voice to Watson.

Bell filed his application for his telephone patent on February 14, 1876, it was issued on March 7 of that year. Three days later, after more experiments and "fine tuning" Bell transmitted the message "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." By June, Bell was able to place both magnetic and variable resistance transmitters on display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where they received considerable attention from the Emperor of Brazil, Don Pedro who had been using Bell's methods in his own country to teach the deaf. The Centennial Judges were impressed (this was the same day that the Battle of the Little BigHorn took place).

On October 9, 1876, the first two-way telephone conversation took place, Boston to Cambridgeport, and one month later, the first "long-distance" call, Boston to Salem. On April 4, 1877 the first telephone line was installed from Charles C. Williams' home in Somerville to his office in Boston. On January 28, 1878, the first commercial switchboard was opened at New Haven, Connecticut. Three years later, Bell began his work with Chichester Bell to improve the reproduction of sound over the metal foil methods of Edison's phonograph, receiving his first patent on wax recording in 1884.

In 1884, Bell established the Volta Bureau to work in the interests of the deaf, visiting England four years later to speak before a Royal Commission. He became the President of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890, financing it with much of his own money. On October 18, 1892, he opened the New York to Chicago long-distance telephone line. In 1896, he became the President of the National Geographic Society.

During Bell's burial services, held on August 4, 1922, at the family home in Beinn Bhreach, Nova Scotia, every telephone throughout the Bell System was silenced for two full minutes. Of Bell, upon whose knee she had sat as a child, and to whom she wrote one of her very first letters, Helen Keller said, "His dominating passion is his love for children. He is never quite so happy as when he had a little deaf child in his arms." Miss Keller dedicated her autobiography to this remarkable Scotsman.

BELL, ANDREW (1726-1809)
Andrew Bell, a native of Edinburgh, deserves his inclusion as a Scot who made a difference as one of the founders of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1768-71. Working primarily as an engraver, his plates for the early editions of the encyclopedia and for a translation of French writer de Buffon's Natural History (1781) are greatly admired today. Bell became sole proprietor of Britannica after the death of his co-compiler Colin MacFarquhar in 1793.

BELL, HENRY (1767-1830)
Henry Bell, who served as an apprentice in his native Dumbartonshire before going to London to study engineering under fellow Scot John Rennie, is famed for launching the first commercially successful steamship in Europe. Sailing from Port Glasgow in 1812, the 28-ton Comet was a successful culmination of Bell's plans for steam-propelled vessels. The little ship must have caused a sensation as it carried passengers and cargo along the River Clyde. Its success (carefully noted by the British Admiralty, to whom Bell had submitted his proposals) signalled that the era of steam navigation in Europe was about to begin -- a new, dynamic age in the long history of transportation.

BELL, JOHN (1691-1780)
Modern interest in China did not begin with the visit of President Nixon in February 1972. In 1714, following some years in St. Petersburg on a diplomatic mission, physician and traveller John Bell did a great deal to alert the Western world to the ways of the Russians and the Chinese. He had left Russia to continue his mission in China in 1718, travelling through Siberia and Mongolia and recording his impressions there. In 1722, he accompanied Russian Emperor Peter the Great on an expedition to the Caspian Sea and later spent some years in Istanbul. His account of his journeys appeared in 1763 as Travels from St. Petersburg in Russian to various Parts of Asia.

BELLENDEN, JOHN (1533-87)
Another writer among the many who had a profound influence on Scottish national feeling in the 16th century was John Bellenden (or Ballenden) who helped get the ball rolling with his translation into Scottish vernacular of Hector Boece's Scotorum Historiae, a glorification of Scottish history published in Paris in 1526. Bellenden apparently translated this monumental work at the request of King James V. It was known as The History and Chronicles of Scotland, and though more of a romance than a true history, it became a model for many later historians and dramatists. Shakespeare used the Boece's story of MacBeth's meeting with the three witches to such good effect.

BLACKWOOD, WILLIAM (1776-1834)
The very first periodical to introduce stories and poems, in addition to serialized novels, was that founded by William Blackwood in 1817, The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (later called Blackwood's Edinburgh). At first noted for its satirical attacks on many literary movements of the day, it later became known for publishing works by Sir Walter Scott, Thomas De Quincy and others. After William's death, the firm continued in the Blackwood family, publishing in serials and then in book form, works by George Eliot, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Anthony Trollope and Joseph Conrad. The magazine also provided stories of British history and the achievements of the Empire for a vast audience in the English-speaking world.

BLAIR, JAMES (1656-1743)
For over 30 years (1710-43) the rector of the charming Parish church at Bruton, in Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the oldest churches in the United States, was Edinburgh-born James Blair, who had been deprived of his parish in Scotland for refusing to take the oath supporting the legitimate claim of the Roman Catholic Duke of York as heir to the throne. But Blair is better known for proposing the founding of a college in Virginia, William and Mary, named for the royal patrons from whom the transplanted clergyman received a charter in 1693, thus making it the second institute of higher learning in the American Colonies (after Harvard, 1636). Blair supervised the construction of the college and became its first president.

BLAIR, ROBERT (1699-1746)
The publication of Robert Blair's immensely popular long poem The Grave in 1743 was a major influence on the so-called "graveyard school" of poetry. Setting down the author's feelings concerning bereavement and death, the poem was also significant as being one of those that began the Romantic Movement in English literature. It is regarded as perhaps the greatest influence upon Gray's Elegy, considered the crowning achievement of the graveyard school. The poem also inspired William Blake to illustrate the 1808 edition.

BLAKE, GEORGE (1893-1961)
Novelist George Blake was born in Greenock. He served in the Great War of 1914-18, where he was wounded at the horror that was Gallipoli. Turning to journalism upon his discharge from the military, he edited the popular John O' London in the 1920's as well as the Strand Magazine before returning to Scotland until World War II (1939-45) to work for the British Government's Ministry of information.

Blake's best-known novel is The Shipbuilders (1935), a fictional account of the troubles on the Clyde during the great economic depressions of the 1920's and 30's. Blake also wrote a sequence of novels dealing with the lives of successive generations in a town he called Garvel that became the basis of many family epics on British television. He also chronicled the development of the River Clyde in Down to the Sea (1937) and The Firth of Clyde (1952).

BOOK OF THE DEAN OF LISMORE (Compiled late 15th century)
This is not a Scotsman (or woman) who made a difference, but a book, for it is the oldest collection of Gaelic poetry (Scottish and Irish) extant in Scotland. It was compiled by Sir James MacGregor, dean of Lismore, Argyll and his brother Duncan. It contains a geology of the MacGregor chiefs, the Chronicle of Fortingall, a list of Scottish kings and a collection of heroic tales and ballads from the Ulaid and Fenian cycles of Irish legend (we have to remember that the Scots people had emigrated from Ireland to settle in Southwestern Scotland and gave their name to their new lands). The book also contains poems by Scottish and Irish authors written in literary Gaelic (already becoming something of a rarity in the period in which they were written).

BORDEN, ROBERT LAIRD (1854-1937)
A Scot who certainly made a difference in the affairs of the great nation of Canada was Robert Laird Borden, born in Nova Scotia (and thus qualifying as a bona fide Scot). Borden was Prime Minister of Canada 1911-20 and leader of the Conservative Party. He played a decisive role in insisting on separate Canadian membership in the League of Nations, and thus in transforming the status of his beloved Canada from that of British colony to that of a proud, independent nation.

BOSWELL, JAMES (1740-95)
Whatever one thinks of the sycophantic, often pathetic figure of Edinburgh-native, Anglophile James Boswell, it is not to be denied that he gave us one of the world's greatest biographies, without which very little would be known or remembered of his subject Dr. Samuel Johnson. Indeed, Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1791, is generally regarded as a supreme achievement in that difficult literary art. As a side issue, his tour of his native Scotland in 1773 along with the indefatigable Dr. Johnson, which led to The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) helped create an appetite for touring the "wilderness" areas of Britain that had hitherto been assiduously avoided. Thus, in some way, the odd couple may be said to have begun the modern tourist industry. Often overlooked his fascinating published journals including Boswell in Search of a Wife 1766-69, telling of his marriage to his penniless cousin.

BOTHWELL, JAMES HEPBURN, 4th Earl (1535-78)
It is wise to remember that much of what James Bothwell did (or did not) accomplish, whatever his influence on Scottish history, it was done in implacable hostility to England and his unwavering support of the Reformation. Once the most powerful lord in southern Scotland, it was Bothwell who was instrumental in having Queen Mary's second husband, Lord Darnley murdered, thus setting off the chain of events that led to the revolt of the Scottish nobility and the Queen's subsequent flight to England, imprisonment and execution.

After his return from exile where had been forced to flee after being accused of plotting against the Queen, Bothwell returned to lead the Queen's forces against the Earl of Moray. He married Queen Mary in May 1567, but was considered a usurper by Catholic and Protestant nobles alike. Their coalition led to the defeat of the Queen's forces (who refused to fight the rebel army at Carberry Hill, near Edinburgh) and the consequent flight of Bothwell to Norway, where he was placed in prison by the Norwegian King Frederick ll.

BOWES-LYON, ELIZABETH (b. 1900)
The present Queen Mother ("the Queen Mom"), highly respected and beloved throughout the United Kingdom and perhaps most of the English-speaking world, is Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, daughter of Lord Glamis, a direct descendant of the 14th century Thane of Glamis, a name made famous by Shakespeare's MacBeth.

Lady Elizabeth married George, the Duke of York, in April 1923 in Westminster Abbey. Their two children are Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) and Margaret. At the abdication of Edward VIII in December of 1936, the Duke of York acceded to the throne as George VI. The royal couple's pre-war visits to many commonwealth countries did much to ensure the loyalty and support given to Britain during World War ll.

Because George and Elizabeth stayed in London during the heavy bombing raids, they gained a special affection from the people of Britain and the Commonwealth and an admiration from the USA that did much to propel that country into aiding Britain prior to its own entry into the war. Buckingham Palace was damaged during the Nazi blitz, but the royal family refused to abandon their people, visiting schools, hospitals, factories and troops throughout the nation.

King George VI died in 1952. Since then, Elizabeth as the Queen Mother has continued her royal duties uninterruptedly, including over 40 official visits overseas. She has served as Patron or President of some 350 organizations, including each of the Army and Air Force Women's Services, former President of the British Red Cross, Commandant-in-Chief of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, as well as being Colonel-in-Chief or Honorary Colonial of many UK and overseas military regiments. In her 90th year, the Queen Mother undertook no fewer than 118 engagements, and was still active in public affairs in 1997.

It is generally understood that the advice and prestige of the Queen Mother did much to keep the royal family together during the difficult Lady Diana years when the dignity of Britain's monarchy was being sorely tested. In 1936, at her coronation, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as a Scottish Queen, was created the first ever Lady of the Thistle.

BRACKENRIDGE, HUGH HENRY (1748-1816)
Of great influence in North American literary circles, Hugh Henry Brackenridge was born in Campeltown, Argyll. After leaving a life of extreme poverty in Scotland, Hugh came to live on a farm in Pennsylvania where he was taught Latin and Greek by a local minister. He then taught school and received a degree from the College of New Jersey at Princeton. A strong supporter of the American Revolution, he joined Washington's forces as a chaplain after receiving his MA in Theology.

Though he contributed to the American cause with his verse dramas and discourses, Brackenridge's main contribution to American literature came in the form of his novel Modern Chivalry (1792-1815), the very first to portray frontier life in the newly- formed United States. The picaresque narrative of the travels of a squire and his servant through the backwoods of western Pennsylvania has earned its place in history as the first literary production of the American frontier.

B, continued

London Hotels at Discount | Dogfacto.com | Home & Garden | Knownworld Travel