Over the past century, Scotland has contributed greatly to the electrical engineering profession, numbering among its sons the likes of Lord Kelvin, James Clerk Maxwell, Alexander Graham Bell, John Logie Baird and Alan Campbell Swinton. Remarkably, it was the need for female assembly labour in the last War that led Ferranti plc to manufacture its gyroscopic gunsights in Edinburgh and give birth to the Scottish electronics industry alongside Barr & Stroud, whose origins stretch back to the times of Lord Kelvin. The long-standing affinity of Scotland with the United States then rapidly led several US multinational enterprises to select Scotland for the manufacture of electromechanical business machines and thereby to access European markets. The Toothill Report in 1961 of the independent Scottish Council (Development & Industry) focused Government policy very successfully on restructuring the Scottish economy away from the traditional industries and towards creating science-based, technically oriented industries. This policy was helped out with electronics by the unexpected discoveryof hugy North Sea oil reserves. Microelectronics has figured prominently since the early 1960s, and today some 21% of all merchant European ICs are manufactured in Scotland, giving rise to the phrase ‘Silicon Glen’. The vulnerability of the Scottish electronics industry to market forces, technological change and external decision marking led to considerable difficulties in the mid-1970s. Fortunately, the early 1980s have seen the growth the 1960s return in inward investment, due largely to the efforts of the Scottish Development Agency; and a number of entrepreneurial operations have reached maturity, with many more in the start-up phase, addressing new electronic andinfromation technology markets. Today, some 43000 people are employed is Scottish electronics, and product output is approaching £2 billion per annum. Most importantly, the industry is now well structured and highly interactive internationally as well as with the large local financial community and higher education sector. This address reviews the evolution of the Scottish electronics industry by concentrating on the role of Ferranti and case studeis of successful ventures by US multinational and entrepreneurial enterprises.