page_title: 1878 in Scotland
section_title: Events
hierarchical_section_title: 1878 in Scotland / Events
caption_attribution_description: English: Original Tay Bridge before the collapse, seen from the north
context_page_description: Events from the year 1878 in Scotland.
context_section_description: 14 January – Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the telephone to Queen Victoria.
  15 March – restoration of the Scottish hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, carried out on the instructions of the newly appointed Pope Leo XIII.
  31 May – the North British Railway's first Tay Bridge across the Firth of Tay is ceremonially opened, its engineer, Thomas Bouch, being made a burgess of Dundee. Designed in iron to replace a train ferry, it is the world's longest bridge at this date.
  12 December – the iron-hulled full-rigged ship Falls of Clyde is launched at Russell & Company's yard at Port Glasgow for Wright and Breakenridge's Glasgow-based Falls Line. In 1968 she will be laid up as a museum ship in Honolulu.
  Sophia Jex-Blake sets up in practice in Edinburgh as the city's first woman doctor.
  The hydropathic establishment in Moffat is opened.
  Construction of forts on Inchkeith begins.
  West coast shipping operator David Hutcheson & Co. passes wholly to control of David MacBrayne.
  The sanitary porcelainware works at Barrhead that becomes part of Armitage Shanks is established.
caption: Original Tay Bridge from the north
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