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While repairing a working model of a steam engine, Watt noticed deficiencies in its operation and hit upon a way to increase its efficiency threefold. His greatly improved engine had radical consequences for mechanical transport and industrialization.

Having made a fortune in New York, McAdam returned to his native Ayrshire in 1783 and began experimenting with crushed stones and tar. The endeavour cost him his fortune, but Parliament eventually remunerated him and made him Surveyor-General of Metropolitan Roads in 1825.

As a young blacksmith, Macmillan saw a child riding a hobby-horse and decided to make one of his own. He experimented with pedals and cranks, and in 1840 built the first bicycle, which he immediately rode from Dumfriesshire to Glasgow – a journey of two days.

This prolific inventor devised an electric telegraph, recognized the potential for electric welding, proposed the first transatlantic submarine cable and demonstrated wireless telegraphy through water. However, he is best remembered as the man who gave us the light bulb, the first creation of continuous electric light.

The “father of antiseptic surgery” was working as house surgeon at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary when he initiated the procedure of soaking instruments and surgical gauzes in carbolic acid. Results were miraculous, doing much to prevent fatal infections following operations.

Bell trained as a teacher of the deaf before being appointed Professor of Vocal Physiology in Boston, where he came up with the telephone prototype. “Yes, Alec, it is I, your father speaking” were some of the first telephonic words uttered.

Ill-health dogged Baird, but it also allowed him time to conduct research. Without financial support, he built a television apparatus from scrap materials and gave the first demonstration in 1926.

In 1928, a chance observation of a mould culture redirected Fleming’s experimentation with antibiotics and led to his discovery of penicillin.

Whilst working at the National Physical Laboratory, Watson-Watt developed a short-wave radio system that could locate aeroplanes. He called it “Radio Detection And Ranging”. In 1940, he became scientific adviser to the Air Ministry, and radar quickly proved its value in World War II.

Cloning – producing an identical organism from a single cell of one “parent” – has been used to manipulate plant life for centuries. In 1997, scientists at Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute produced the first successfully cloned mammal, Dolly, propagated from a single udder cell of a sheep.