1 It’s at times like these when we can all be grateful for Glaswegian chemist Charles Macintosh. The constant rain that has been battering the city over the last few days would have been a lot harder to deal with had it not been for his marvellous invention of 1823 - the raincoat. 2 Born on December 29, 1766, Macintosh worked as a clerk for a Glasgow merchant, but by the age of 19 he had already given it up to pursue his true passion of chemistry. By 1797, at the age of 23, he had established Scotland’s first alum works at Hurlet in Renfrewshire using as a raw material waste shale from oil shale mines. He also went into partnership with Charles Tennant, producing bleaching powder at a chemical works at St Rollox in Glasgow.