The Georgian House (National Trust for Scotland)

This guide to the Georgian House on Charlotte Square in Edinburgh's New Town opens with Ann Young, a local music teacher who patented an educational board game in 1801, the first of its kind in Britain and the only patent granted to a woman that year. It carries that same appetite for clever solutions into the house itself, from the mechanical spit turning in the basement kitchen to the bell board that let staff answer calls from any floor without climbing the stairs.