John Logie BairdFRSE (/ˈloʊɡibɛərd/;[1] 13 August 1888 – 14 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first mechanicaltelevision system on 26 January 1926.[2][3][4] He went on to invent the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electroniccolour television picture tube.[5][6]
In 1928, the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission.[5] Baird's early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television's history.
In 2006, Baird was named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in theNational Library of Scotland's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'.[7] In 2015, he was inducted into theScottish Engineering Hall of Fame.[8] In 2017,IEEE unveiled a bronze street plaque at 22 Frith Street (Bar Italia), London, dedicated to Baird and the invention of television.[9] In 2021, theRoyal Mint unveiled a John Logie Baird50p coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of his death.[10]
Baird was born on 13 August 1888 inHelensburgh, Dunbartonshire, and was the youngest of four children of the Reverend John Baird, theChurch of Scotland's minister for the local St Bride's Church, and Jessie Morrison Inglis, the orphaned niece of the wealthyInglis family of shipbuilders fromGlasgow.[11][12]
He was educated atLarchfield Academy (now part ofLomond School) in Helensburgh; theGlasgow and West of Scotland Technical College; and theUniversity of Glasgow. While at college, Baird undertook a series of engineering apprentice jobs as part of his course. The conditions in industrial Glasgow at the time helped form his socialist convictions but also contributed to his ill health. He became an agnostic, though this did not strain his relationship with his father.[13] His degree course was interrupted by theFirst World War and he never returned to graduate.
At the beginning of 1915 he volunteered for service in the British Army but was classified as unfit for active duty. Unable to go to the front, he took a job with the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company, which was engaged in munitions work.[14][page needed]
In early 1923, and in poor health, Baird moved to 21 Linton Crescent,Hastings, on the south coast of England. He later rented a workshop in the Queen's Arcade in the town. Baird built what was to become the world's first working television set using items that included an old hatbox and a pair of scissors, some darning needles, a few bicycle light lenses, a used tea chest, and sealing wax and glue that he purchased.[15] In February 1924, he demonstrated to theRadio Times that a semi-mechanicalanalogue television system was possible by transmitting moving silhouette images.[16] In July of the same year, he received a 1000-volt electric shock but survived with only a burnt hand but, as a result, his landlord, Mr Tree, asked him to vacate the premises.[17] Soon after arriving in London, looking for publicity, Baird visited theDaily Express newspaper to promote his invention. The news editor was terrified and he was quoted by one of his staff as saying: "For God's sake, go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him—he may have a razor on him."[18]
John Logie Baird with his television apparatus,c. 1925
In these attempts to develop a working television system, Baird experimented using theNipkow disk.Paul Gottlieb Nipkow had invented this scanning system in 1884.[19] Television historian Albert Abramson calls Nipkow's patent "the master television patent".[20] Nipkow's work is important because Baird, followed by many others, chose to develop it into a broadcast medium.
Baird in 1926 with his televisor equipment and dummies "James" and "Stooky Bill"
In his laboratory on 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with agreyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed "Stooky Bill" in a 32-line vertically scanned image, at five pictures per second.[21] Baird went downstairs and fetched an office worker, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to see what a human face would look like, and Taynton became the first person to be televised in a full tonal range.[22]
In June 1924, Baird purchasedthallium sulfide (developed byTheodore Case in the US)[23] fromCyril Frank Elwell. The chemical became an important part in the development of "talking pictures." Baird's implementation of thethallium sulfide resulted in the first live-animated image on lense fromreflected light. He improved thesignal conditioning from the thallium sulfide "cell" via temperature optimisation (cooling) and his own custom-designed video amplifier,[23] pioneering the technology we now use today.
Baird gave the first public demonstration of moving silhouette images by television atSelfridges department store in London in a three-week period beginning on 25 March 1925.[24]
The first known photograph of a moving image produced by Baird's "televisor", as reported inThe Times, 28 January 1926 (The subject is Baird's business partnerOliver Hutchinson.)
On 26 January 1926, Baird gave the first public demonstration of true television images for members of theRoyal Institution and a reporter fromThe Times in his laboratory at 22Frith Street in theSoho district of London, whereBar Italia is now located.[5][25][26][27] Baird initially used a scan rate of 5 pictures per second, improving this to 12.5 pictures per second c.1927. It was the first demonstration of a television system that could scan and display live moving images with tonal graduation.[3]
Blue plaque marking Baird's first demonstration of television at 22 Frith Street, Westminster, W1, London
He demonstrated the world's first colour transmission on 3 July 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with a filter of a different primary colour; and three light sources at the receiving end, with acommutator to alternate their illumination.[28][29] In the same year he also demonstrated stereoscopic television.[30]
In 1927, Baird transmitted the world's first long-distance television pictures over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Central Hotel atGlasgow Central station.[31]This transmission was Baird's response to a 225-mile, long-distance telecast between stations of AT&T Bell Labs.[32] The Bell stations were in New York and Washington, DC. The earlier telecast took place in April 1927, a month before Baird's demonstration.[20]
Baird demonstrating his mechanical television system in New York, 1931
Baird set up theBaird Television Development Company Ltd, which in 1928 made the first transatlantic television transmission, from London toHartsdale, New York, and in 1929 the first television programmes officially transmitted by theBBC. In November 1929, Baird andBernard Natan established France's first television company, Télévision-Baird-Natan.[33] Broadcast on the BBC on 14 July 1930,The Man with the Flower in His Mouth was the first drama shown on UK television.[34] The BBC transmitted Baird's first live outside broadcast with the televising ofThe Derby in 1931.[35][36] He demonstrated a theatre television system, with a screen two feet by five feet (60 cm by 150 cm), in 1930 at theLondon Coliseum, Berlin, Paris, andStockholm.[37] By 1939 he had improved his theatre projection to televise a boxing match on a screen 15 ft (4.6 m) by 12 ft (3.7 m).[38]
From 1929 to 1935, the BBC transmitters were used to broadcast television programmes using the 30-line Baird system, and from 1932 to 1935 the BBC also produced the programmes in their own studio, first at Broadcasting House and then later at 16 Portland Place.[39] In addition, from 1933 Baird and the Baird Company were producing and broadcasting a small number of television programmes independent of the BBC from Baird's studios and transmitter at the Crystal Palace in south London.[40]
On 2 November 1936, fromAlexandra Palace located on the high ground of the north London ridge,the BBC began alternating Baird 240-line transmissions withEMI's electronic scanning system, which had recently been improved to405-lines after a merger withMarconi. The Baird system at the time involved an intermediate film process, where footage was shot on cinefilm, which was rapidly developed and scanned.[citation needed]
An early experimental television broadcast
The trial was due to last for 6 months but the BBC ceased broadcasts with the Baird system in February 1937, due in part to a disastrous fire in the Baird facilities at Crystal Palace. It was becoming apparent to the BBC that the Baird system would ultimately fail due in large part to the lack of mobility of the Baird system's cameras, with their developer tanks, hoses, and cables.[41] Commercially Baird's contemporaries, such as George William Walton andWilliam Stephenson, were ultimately more successful as their patents underpinned the early television system used byScophony Limited who operated in Britain up to WWII and then in the US. "Of all the electro-mechanical television techniques invented and developed by the mid 1930s, the technology known as Scophony had no rival in terms of technical performance."[42][page needed] In 1948 Scophony acquired John Logie Baird Ltd.
Baird's television systems were replaced by the first fully electronic television system developed by the newly formed company EMI-Marconi under SirIsaac Shoenberg, who headed a research group that developed an advanced camera tube (the Emitron) and a relatively efficient hard-vacuum cathode-ray tube for the television receiver.[43]Philo T. Farnsworth's electronic "Image Dissector" camera was available to Baird's company via a patent-sharing agreement. However, the Image Dissector camera was found to be lacking in light sensitivity, requiring excessive levels of illumination. The Baird company used the Farnsworth tubes instead to scan cinefilm, in which capacity they proved serviceable though prone to drop-outs and other problems. Farnsworth himself came to London to the BairdCrystal Palace laboratories in 1936 but was unable to fully solve the problem; the fire that burned Crystal Palace to the ground later that year further hampered the Baird company's ability to compete.[44]
This live image ofPaddy Naismith was used to demonstrate Baird's first all-electroniccolour television system, which used two projection CRTs. The two-colour image was similar to the later Telechrome system.
Baird made many contributions to the field of electronic television after mechanical systems became obsolete. In 1939, he showed a system known today as hybrid colour using acathode-ray tube in front of which revolved a disc fitted with colour filters, a method taken up byCBS and RCA in the United States.[45]
As early as 1940, Baird had started work on a fully electronic system he called the "Telechrome". Early Telechrome devices used two electron guns aimed at either side of a phosphor plate. The phosphor was patterned so the electrons from the guns only fell on one side of the patterning or the other. Usingcyan andmagenta phosphors, a reasonable limited-colour image could be obtained.
A Baird television advertisement c. 1949
In 1941, he patented and demonstrated this system of three-dimensional television at a definition of 500 lines. On 16 August 1944, he gave the world's first demonstration of a practical fully electroniccolour television display.[46] His 600-line colour system used tripleinterlacing, using six scans to build each picture.[6][45]
In 1943, the Hankey Committee was appointed to oversee the resumption of television broadcasts after the war. Baird persuaded them to make plans to adopt his proposed 1000-line Telechrome electronic colour system as the new post-war broadcast standard. The picture resolution on this system would have been comparable to today's HDTV (High Definition Television). The Hankey Committee's plan lost all momentum partly due to the challenges of postwar reconstruction. The monochrome 405-line standard remained in place until 1985 in some areas, and the 625-line system was introduced in 1964 and (PAL) colour in 1967. A demonstration of large screen three-dimensional television by the BBC was reported in March 2008, over 60 years after Baird's demonstration.[47]
Some of Baird's early inventions were not fully successful. In his twenties he tried to creatediamonds by heatinggraphite. Later Baird invented a glass razor, which was rust-resistant, but shattered. Inspired by pneumatic tyres he attempted to make pneumatic shoes, but his prototype contained semi-inflated balloons, which burst (years later this same idea was successfully adopted forDr. Martens boots). He also invented a thermal undersock (the Baird undersock), which was moderately successful. Baird suffered from cold feet, and after several trials, he found that an extra layer of cotton inside the sock provided warmth.[15]
Between 1926 and 1928, he attempted to develop an early video recording device, which he dubbedPhonovision.[48] The system consisted of a large Nipkow scanning disk attached by a mechanical linkage to arecord-cutting lathe. The result was a disc that could record a 30-line video signal. Technical difficulties with the system prevented its further development, but some of the original Phonovision discs have been preserved.[49][50]
Baird's other developments were infibre-optics, radio direction finding,infrarednight viewing andradar. There is discussion about his exact contribution to the development of radar, for his wartime defence projects have never been officially acknowledged by theUK government. 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.[51] The radar contribution is in dispute. According to some experts, Baird's "Noctovision" is not radar. Unlike radar (exceptcontinuous wave radar), Noctovision is incapable of determining the distance to the scanned subject. Noctovision also cannot determine the coordinates of the subject in three-dimensional space.[52]
From December 1944, Logie Baird lived at 1 Station Road,Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, he later died there on 14 June 1946 after suffering a stroke in February.[53] The house was demolished in 2007 and the site is now occupied by apartments named Baird Court.[53] Logie Baird is buried beside his parents inHelensburgh Cemetery, Argyll, Scotland.[54]
Blue plaque erected by Greater London Council at 3 Crescent Wood Road, Sydenham, London
Australian television'sLogie Awards were named in honour of John Logie Baird's contribution to the invention of the television.
Baird became the only posthumous subject ofThis Is Your Life when he was honoured byEamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre in 1957.[55]
In 2014, theSociety of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) inducted Logie Baird into The Honor Roll, which "posthumously recognizes individuals who were not awarded Honorary Membership during their lifetimes but whose contributions would have been sufficient to warrant such an honor".[56]
^R. W. Burns (2000). John Logie Baird, Television Pioneer. IET. p. 10.ISBN9780852967973. "Even Baird's conversion to agnosticism while living at home does not appear to have stimulated a rebuke from the Reverend John Baird. Moreover, Baird was freely allowed to try to persuade others—including visiting clergy—to his beliefs."
^T. McArthur and P. Waddell,Vision Warrior, Orkney Press, 1990
^"Baird Television Limited – Growing Demand For Home Receivers – Success of Large Screen Projections in Cinemas – etc".The Times, 3 April 1939 p23 column A.
^McLean, Donald F (April 1985). "Computer-based analysis and restoration of Baird 30-line television recordings".Journal of the Royal Television Society.22:87–94.
