20 Incredible Inventions You Didn't Know Were Scottish

18. Time (Well, Universal Standard Time)

Okay, so the Scottish didn't invent time €“ time, after all, is an amorphous concept and probably doesn't actually exist in any real sense. But for all practical purposes people around the planet go by their clocks and watches, and it was another Scottish man, Sir Sandford Fleming, who created an international system by which it's measured. We'd like to think we can blame him for jet lag but it's probably not really his fault.

17. Steam Engines

The use of boiling water to produce mechanical motion goes back thousands of years, but its effective application to drive an engine is all down to James Watt, who patented an engine producing continuous rotative motion in 1781. Without Watt's device the Industrial Revolution may never have happened, and by turn the technological revolution which followed, making him one of the most innovative humans in the modern world.