Another National Day

St. Andrew's Day... and Wired reminds us of Scotland's contribution to the modern world we live in.

In the wake of the Scottish Enlightenment, an 18th-century period during which the country achieved great intellectual and scientific accomplishments, emigrants spread what writer Arthur Herman calls the Scottish mentality well beyond the United Kingdom.

“When we gaze out on a contemporary world shaped by technology, capitalism and modern democracy, and struggle to find our own place in it, we are in effect viewing the world through the same lens as the Scots did,” writes Herman in his 2001 book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World.

Wired lists here some of the inventors of the modern world.