FAMOUS Scottish VICTORIANs By Marissa Young

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 and was a Scottish author who wrote Treasure Island and Kidnapped which are two of the most popular children's stories ever written. Stevenson was a sickly child (he had serious lung problems) who read a great deal about travel and adventure. A combination of his love of adventure and ill health led him to spend many years as a writer travelling the world in search of a climate that was healthier than Britain's.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) In 1890, he went to live in the remote Samoan Islands in the South Pacific. He died there in 1894 at the age of 44.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Alexander Graham bell (1847 – 1922) Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is best known for his invention of the telephone. Many inventors had been working on the idea of sending human speech by wire, but Bell was the first to succeed. In 1876 at the age of 29 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

Alexander Graham bell (1847 - 1922)

Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881) Born on December 4, 1795, in Galloway, Scotland, Thomas Carlyle studied at the University of Edinburgh and later became an essayist. In the mid-1830s, he published Sartor Resartus, and when he released The French Revolution in 1837, he became a prominent writer of his day.

Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)

J M Barrie (i860 – 1937) Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland but moved to London, where he wrote a number of successful novels and plays.

J M Barrie (i860 – 1937)

John Logie baird (1888 – 1946) John Logie Baird was born on 14 August 1888 in Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland, the son of a clergyman. Dogged by ill health for most of his life, he nonetheless showed early signs of ingenuity, rigging up a telephone exchange to connect his bedroom to those of his friends across the street.

John Logie baird (1888 – 1946) His studies at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College were interrupted by the outbreak of World War One. Rejected as unfit for the forces, he served as superintendent engineer of the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company. When the war ended he set himself up in business, with mixed results.

John Logie baird (1888 – 1946) He then moved to the south coast of England and applied himself to creating a television, a dream of many scientists for decades. His first crude apparatus was made of odds and ends, but by 1924 he managed to transmit a flickering image across a few feet. On 26th January 1926 he gave the world's first demonstration of true television before 50 scientists in an attic room in central London. In 1927, his television was demonstrated over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow, and he formed the Baird Television Development Company (BTDC).

John Logie baird (1888 – 1946)