Electrical engineer and television pioneer, born in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, W Scotland, UK. He studied electrical engineering at Glasgow University, later settling in Hastings (1922), where he began research into the possibilities of television. In 1926 he gave the first demonstration of a television image. His 30-line mechanically scanned system was adopted by the BBC in 1929, being superseded in 1936 by his 240-line system. In the following year the BBC chose a rival 405-line system with electronic scanning made by Marconi-EMI. Other lines of research initiated by Baird in the 1920s included radar and infra-red television (Noctovision); he also succeeded in producing three-dimensional and coloured images (1944), as well as projection onto a screen and stereophonic sound.
John Logie Baird (August 13, 1888 – June 14, 1946) was a Scottish engineer, who is best known as the inventor of the first working electromechanical television system.
Birth and education
Baird was born in Helensburgh, Argyll, Scotland.
Television experiments
Although the development of television was the result of work by many inventors, Baird is one of its foremost pioneers. Baird achieved this, where earlier experimenters had failed, by obtaining a better photoelectric cell and improving the signal conditioning from the photocell and the video amplifier.
In his first attempts to invent television, Baird experimented with the Nipkow disk, and demonstrated to the Radio Times that a semi-mechanical analogue television system was possible with the transmission of moving silhouette images, such as his fingers wiggling, in his London laboratory in February 1924. Baird gave the first public demonstration of moving silhouette images by television at Selfridges department store in London in a three-week series of demonstrations beginning March 25, 1925.
On October 2, 1925, John Logie Baird was successful in transmitting in his laboratory the first television picture with halftones: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy, in a 30-line vertically scanned image, at 5 pictures per second. Baird went downstairs and fetched an office boy, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to see what a human face would look like.
First public demonstrations
Baird repeated the transmission for members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times on January 26, 1926 in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London. It was the world's first demonstration of a true television system, one that could broadcast moving images with tone graduation.
He demonstrated the world's first color transmission on July 3, 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with filters of a different primary color;
Broadcasting
In 1927 Baird transmitted a long-distance television signal over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow. He then set up the Baird Television Development Company Ltd, which in 1928 made the first transatlantic television transmission from London to Hartsdale, New York and also made the first television programme for the BBC. He demonstrated a theatre television system, with a screen two feet by five feet, in 1930 at the London Coliseum, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm.
From 1929-1935, the BBC broadcast television programmes using the 30-line Baird system. In late 1936 the BBC began alternating Baird 240-line transmissions with EMI's electronic scanning system which had recently been improved to 405-lines after a merger with Marconi. The BBC ceased broadcasts with the Baird system in early 1937.
Baird's television systems were replaced by the electronic television system developed by the newly formed company EMI-Marconi under Isaac Shoenberg, which had access to patents developed by Vladimir Zworykin and RCA. Farnsworth's electronic Image Dissector camera was available to Baird's company via a patent-sharing agreement;
Baird made many contributions to the field of electronic television after mechanical systems took a backseat to electronic systems.
Other inventions
Some of Baird's early inventions were not up to standard. Not long afterwards Baird perfected a glass razor;
Baird's numerous other developments demonstrate his particular talent at invention. According to Malcolm Baird, his son, what is known is that in 1926 Baird filed a patent for a device that formed images from reflected radio waves, a device remarkably similar to radar, and that he was in correspondence with the British government at the time. Much of the information regarding Baird's work in this area is just beginning to emerge.
There is a working model of the Baird televisor in the London Science Museum.
Legacy
From December 1944 until his death in 1946, Baird lived at a house in Station Road, Bexhill On Sea, immediately north of the station itself. Baird died in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England in 1946 after suffering a stroke in February of that year.
In the Channel 5 programme Don't Get Me Started, aired on 29 August 2006, presenter Selina Scott complained about the falling standards of British TV with such shows as Big Brother and other "reality" programmes. Malcolm Baird said in an interview that had his father known how TV would turn out in sixty years time, he would have dropped it and turned to something else. ISBN 1841830631 Kamm, Antony, and Malcolm Baird, John Logie Baird: A Life. McLean, Donald F., Restoring Baird's Image.
User Comments Add a comment…