I'm Alastair McIntyre and the site was created in Scotland in 1996 and has been hosted in Kentucky in the USA since 1998 and now operated from Canada where I moved to from Scotland in 2004.Our operation moved from Kentucky to Michigan in 2008.

Most of our material comes from antiquarian books which we publish onto the site. Most of these books can be hard to find as they are no longer in print and so can usually only be found in rare book rooms of libraries or second hand book shops. Not only will you find a lot of history about Scotland but also social history and history of agriculture, medicine, law, education, etc. You will also find a lot of histories on individual clans and families, Scots-Irish history and also histories of Scottish people that emigrated and worked in virtually every country in the world and the role they played in their new home lands.

A wee introduction to Electric Scotland in 2010

As well as all the history we've added material on travelling to Scotland with lots of suggested tours and hundreds of pictures. For the young ones we've added some 800 children's stories as well as some wee games which all ages will enjoy. To help you find content on the site we have a site search engine in our header and so you can be assured that all links will have something to do with Scotland making it easier to find what you are looking for. As well as that we also point to a Tartan search engine in our Tartans section.

To be frank if I were to sit with you and take you through all the sections of the site it would take at least 2 hours just to give you an overview and so you can see that the site is very large. We add chapters of books every day to the site so if you catch us at the start of a new book you can read it with us as we publish it chapter by chapter.  I essentially lay the book on my flat bed scanner then use my OCR program to scan the pages.  Once done I proof the scan and then post it on the site.

When I first started Electric Scotland is was to play a role in my own personal life in that I have always enjoyed History but at school we got very little Scottish history. And so when I decided to build a web site Scottish History was the obvious choice. It meant I could learn about Scottish History myself and as I learned I'd publish the books onto the web site to share with you all.  One part I didn't think about back then was the part played by Scots and their descendants all over the world and this has become a large part of the site.  In 2008 our Scottish schools will at last teach Scottish History to our children and I very much welcome this move.

We do get many contributions from our regular visitors be they articles, family biographies or pictures. We welcome all such contributions and we see ourselves as serving the world wide Scottish community to help them understand better the history of Scotland and the role played by Scots around the world. 

The story of the Scots at home and abroad is truly amazing as you'll learn as you read through some of our content.  We have helped so many countries around the world to develop and been very involved in all aspects from Government, Education, Industry and the Church.  The only gap in our learning is currently about Scottish business at home and abroad and we continue to work on trying to tell you that story but the Scots of today are really very shy about telling us their stories.

Alastair McIntyre, KCTJ, FSA Scot.

And an Update in 2017

An audio mp3 telling you about Electric Scotland and what you can use to keep yourself and family busy during the Cronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Play it here or watch a video of it below...

Electric Scotland's Baronial Home