Rich Man’s Burden

If generalizations about national character and national callings were as unreliable as some people purport to think, then the names MacAdam and MacIntosh would not have entered everyday language (albeit abbreviated as the words tarmac and mac). Scots like to boast of the number of practical and engineered devices that their sons have given the world (John Logie Baird’s first TV set might be another, if less eponymous, example), and it used to be said that if you shouted “Mac!” down the hatch to the engine room on any ship in the British Empire, the chief mechanic would very soon make his appearance on deck.

(This tradition survived into the naming of “Scotty,” the only man who knew how to keep the Starship Enterprise functioning and on course.) And native enterprise, too, is considered by the thrifty Scots to have been the air that was breathed by that great son ...