He also invented fabrics for pneumatic
tyres and fire-hose. James P. Lee, born in Roxburghshire in 1837, was
inventor of the Lee magazine gun which was adopted by the United
States Navy in 1895. His first weapon was a breech-loading rifle which
was adopted by the United States Government during the Civil War.
Later he organized the Lee Arms Company of Connecticut. The production
of the telephone as a practical and now universally employed method of
"annihilating time and space" in the articulate intercourse of the
human race will forever be associated with the name of Alexander
Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh in 1847. By its means he has promoted
commerce, created new industries, and has bridged continents, all the
result of "sheer hard thinking aided by unbounded genius." To Dr.
Graham Bell we are also indebted for the photophone, for the inductoin
balance, the telephone probe, and the gramophone. During the war he
designed a "submarine chaser" capable of traveling under water at a
speed of over seventy miles an hour, and he has made important
experiments in the field of aeronautics and in other arts and
sciences. The mother of Thomas Alva Edison (b. 1847), it may here be
mentioned, was of Scottish parentage (Elliott). The originator of the
duplex system in the manufacture of railroad tickets was William
Harrison Campbell (1846-1906), of Scottish parentage. William Malcolm
(1823-90), also of Scottish parentage, was the inventor of telescopic
sights, an invention adopted by all civilized governments.
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