James Pillans

He is credited with inventing the blackboard, alongside his colleague Jack Smart[1] but more correctly was the inventor of coloured chalk.

Pillans was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, under Alexander Adam, of whom he subsequently contributed a biography to the Encyclopædia Britannica.

He became a pupil of Andrew Dalzell, was influenced by Dugald Stewart, and attended the chemistry lectures of Joseph Black.

After graduation he acted as tutor, first to Thomas Francis Kennedy at Dunure, Ayrshire, next in a family in Northumberland, where he had the opportunity of speaking French.

With the support of Robert Blair, Lord Avontoun he was chosen over Luke Fraser, the internal candidate, despite his Whig politics which counted against him with the Tory town council.

[6][7][8] In 1820 the chair of "humanity and laws" (in effect Latin) at the University of Edinburgh was vacated by the death of Alexander Christison.

A prize was awarded for English recitation,; among those who gained it was Fox Maule, who joined the class when he was quartered with his regiment in Edinburgh Castle.

Unfavourable comments on the Juvenal translation of Francis Hodgson earned him a swipe in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

[14] It was entitled Successful application of the new system to language-learning, and dated 1814; it mentions the use of chalk and blackboard in teaching geography.

This book proved controversial, being attacked in Letters addressed to the Parochial Schoolmasters of Scotland (1829),[15] reviewed negatively in the Edinburgh Literary Journal which defended Pillans.

[17] The review was in fact by Bell, who had met Pillans not long before, and felt that the variant of the "system" that was described in the Letters did not do justice to his own ideas.

A volume of the compositions of his class appeared as Ex Tentaminibus Metricis … in Schola Regia Edinensi … electa, Edinburgh, 1812, dedicated to Joseph Goodall.

[4] Helen is buried separately from James Pillans but lies in the same section of St Cuthbert's Churchyard, against a wall to the south-east of his grave.