John Milne

After two years at University College Dundee, John Bell Milne went to Edinburgh University in 1904, from where he qualified as a dentist in 1908. During his time at college in Dundee he established himself as a fine gymnast and high jumper as a member of the Dundee Gymnastic and Athletic Club. As a gymnast, he represented Dundee in the prestigious Adams Shield at the turn of the 20th century and also competed for Scotland in the annual triangular match against England and Ireland. Having won the Scottish high jump titles several times, Milne was involved in a three-way tie to share the 1904 English AAAs title with Ireland’s Peter O’Connor and R. G. Murray (West of Scotland).

Milne worked at the Dundee Dental Hospital and School, and set up the Dundee Dental Club to help break down the barrier between newly qualified dentists and their more experienced counterparts. In the 1920s, Milne moved to London to take up a post at King’s College Hospital as a director of dental studies. He retired in 1948, after more than 20 years working at King’s, and then returned north to Dundee.

At the turn of the 20th century, Milne was a friend of British aviation pioneer Preston Watson, a fellow Scottish athlete and gymnast, who it was strongly believed for many years made the first powered flight five months before Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic flight. Milne had substantiated this story, but in 1955 he revealed that the 1903 flight was actually in Watson’s glider and an engine was not fitted to it for another couple of years. Despite that, by 1908 Watson was still ahead of his American rivals because he had invented a plane capable of taking off under its own power, a year before the Wright Brothers came up with a similar machine.