John Logie Baird
Encyclopedia
John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish
engineer
and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television
system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube. Although Baird's electromechanical system was eventually displaced by purely electronic systems (such as those of Marconi-EMI and Philo Farnsworth
), Baird's early successes demonstrating working television broadcasts and his colour and cinema television work earn him a prominent place in television's invention.
In 2002, Logie Baird was ranked number 44 in the list of the "100 Greatest Britons
" following a UK-wide vote. In 2006, Logie Baird was also named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland
's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'.. The "Baird" brand name was first owned by Thorn-EMI and was sold off to a small Chinese manufacturer when Thorn-EMI was dissolved.
, Argyll and Bute
(then Dunbartonshire
). He was educated at Larchfield Academy
(now part of Lomond School
) in Helensburgh; the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (which later became the University of Strathclyde
); and the University of Glasgow
. His degree course was interrupted by World War I and he never returned to graduate.
from the photocell and the video amplifier.
Between 1902 and 1907, Arthur Korn
invented and built the first successful signal-conditioning circuits for image transmission. The circuits overcame the image-destroying lag effect that is part of selenium photocells. Korn's compensation circuit allowed him to send still pictures by telephone or wireless between countries and even over oceans, while his circuit operated without benefit of electronic amplification. Korn's success at transmitting halftone still images suggested that such compensation circuits might work in television. Baird was the direct beneficiary of Korn's research and success.
In his first attempts to develop a working television system, Baird experimented with the Nipkow disk
. Paul Nipkow had invented this scanning disc system in 1884. Television historian Albert Abramson calls Nipkow's patent "the master television patent." Nipkow's work is important because Baird and many others chose to develop it into a broadcast medium.
In early 1923, and in poor health, Baird moved to 21 Linton Crescent, Hastings
, on the south coast of England
and rented a workshop in Queen's Arcade in the town. Baird built what was to become the world's first working television set using items including 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. In February 1924, he demonstrated to the Radio Times that a semi-mechanical analogue television system was possible by transmitting moving silhouette images. In July of the same year, he received a 1000-volt electric shock but fortunately survived with only a burnt hand. His landlord, a Mr Tree, asked him to quit his workshop and he moved to upstairs rooms in Soho
, London
where he made a technical breakthrough. 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 on 25 March 1925.
In his laboratory on 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed "Stooky Bill
" in a 30-line vertically scanned image, at five pictures per second. 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. Looking for publicity, Baird visited the Daily Express newspaper to promote his invention. The news editor was terrified: 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."
and a reporter from The Times
in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street
in the Soho
district of London. By this time, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 pictures per second. It was the first demonstration of a television system that could broadcast live moving images with tone graduation.
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 a commutator to alternate their illumination. That same year he also demonstrated stereoscopic television.
In 1932, Baird was the first person in Britain
to demonstrate ultra-short wave transmission. (Today, we refer to "ultra short waves" as the VHF band.) Contrary to some reports, these transmissions were far from the first VHF telecasts. In 1931, the US Federal Radio Commission
allocated VHF television bands. From 1931 to 1933, station W9XD in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
transmitted some of the first VHF television signals. The station's 45-line, triply interlaced pictures used the U. A. Sanabria
television technology.
; Baird transmitted the world's first long-distance television pictures to the Central Hotel at Glasgow Central Station.
This transmission was Baird's response to a 225-mile, long-distance telecast between stations of AT&T Bell Labs. The Bell stations were in New York and Washington, DC. The earlier telecast took place in April 1927, a month before Baird's demonstration.
Baird 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 the first television programme for the BBC
. In November 1929, Baird and Bernard Natan
established France's first television
company, Télévision-Baird-Natan. He televised the first live transmission of the Epsom Derby
in 1931. He demonstrated a theatre television system, with a screen two feet by five feet (60 cm by 150 cm), in 1930 at the London Coliseum
, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm
. By 1939 he had improved his theatre projection system to televise a boxing match on a screen 15 ft (4.6 m) by 12 ft (3.7 m).
From 1929 to 1932, 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 at 16 Portland Place. On 3 November 1936, from Alexandra Palace
located on the high ground of the north London ridge, 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 Baird system at the time involved an intermediate film process, where footage was shot on cinefilm which was rapidly developed and scanned. The trial was due to last 6 months but the BBC were forced to cease broadcasts with the Baird system in February 1937, due to a disastrous fire in the Baird studio. 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.
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
. Similarly, 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. Baird used the Farnsworth tubes instead to scan cinefilm, in which capacity they proved serviceable though prone to dropouts and other problems. Farnsworth himself came to London to Baird's Crystal 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.
Baird made many contributions to the field of electronic television after mechanical systems had taken a back seat. In 1939, he showed colour television using a cathode ray tube
in front of which revolved a disc fitted with colour filters, a method taken up by CBS
and RCA in the United States. In 1941, he patented and demonstrated a system of three-dimensional television at a definition of 500 lines. On 16 August 1944, he gave the world's first demonstration of a fully electronic colour television display. His 600-line colour system used triple interlacing, using six scans to build each picture. 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 quality on this system would have been comparable to today's HDTV. 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 it was three decades until the introduction of the 625-line system 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.
and shorted out Glasgow's electricity supply. Later Baird perfected 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. He also invented a thermal undersock (the Baird undersock), which was moderately successful. Baird suffered from cold feet, and after a number of trials, he found that an extra layer of cotton inside the sock provided warmth.
Baird's numerous other developments demonstrated his particular talent at invention. He was a visionary and began to dabble with electricity. In 1928, he developed an early video
recording device, which he dubbed Phonovision
. The system consisted of a large Nipkow disk attached by a mechanical linkage to a conventional 78-rpm record-cutting lathe. The result was a disc that could record and play back a 30-line video signal. Technical difficulties with the system prevented its further development, but some of the original phonodiscs have been preserved, and have since been restored by Donald McLean, a Scottish electrical engineer. Baird's other developments were in fibre-optics
, radio direction finding, infrared
night viewing and radar
. There is discussion about his exact contribution to the development of radar, for his wartime defence projects have never been officially acknowledged by the UK 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. The radar contribution is in dispute. According to some experts, Baird's "noctovision" is not radar. Unlike radar (except Doppler 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.
, East Sussex
, immediately north of the station itself. Baird died in Bexhill on 14 June 1946 after a stroke in February of that year. The old house was demolished in 2007. The Sea Road-Station Road skyline now features a new block of 51 flats on the site, renamed "Baird Court".
John Logie Baird is buried with his mother, father and wife in Helensburgh Cemetery
.
Patents
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube. Although Baird's electromechanical system was eventually displaced by purely electronic systems (such as those of Marconi-EMI and Philo Farnsworth
Philo Farnsworth
Philo Taylor Farnsworth was an American inventor and television pioneer. Although he made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television, he is perhaps best known for inventing the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device , the "image...
), Baird's early successes demonstrating working television broadcasts and his colour and cinema television work earn him a prominent place in television's invention.
In 2002, Logie Baird was ranked number 44 in the list of the "100 Greatest Britons
100 Greatest Britons
100 Greatest Britons was broadcast in 2002 by the BBC. The programme was the result of a vote conducted to determine whom the United Kingdom public considers the greatest British people in history. The series, Great Britons, included individual programmes on the top ten, with viewers having further...
" following a UK-wide vote. In 2006, Logie Baird was also named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland
National Library of Scotland
The National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library of Scotland and is one of the country's National Collections. It is based in a collection of buildings in Edinburgh city centre. The headquarters is on George IV Bridge, between the Old Town and the university quarter...
's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'.. The "Baird" brand name was first owned by Thorn-EMI and was sold off to a small Chinese manufacturer when Thorn-EMI was dissolved.
Early years
Baird was born in HelensburghHelensburgh
Helensburgh is a town in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It lies on the north shore of the Firth of Clyde and the eastern shore of the entrance to the Gareloch....
, Argyll and Bute
Argyll and Bute
Argyll and Bute is both one of 32 unitary council areas; and a Lieutenancy area in Scotland. The administrative centre for the council area is located in Lochgilphead.Argyll and Bute covers the second largest administrative area of any Scottish council...
(then Dunbartonshire
Dunbartonshire
Dunbartonshire or the County of Dumbarton is a lieutenancy area and registration county in the west central Lowlands of Scotland lying to the north of the River Clyde. Until 1975 it was a county used as a primary unit of local government with its county town and administrative centre at the town...
). He was educated at Larchfield Academy
Larchfield Academy
Larchfield Academy was a preparatory school for boys in Helensburgh, Scotland.It was founded in 1845. Among its famous pupils were Sir James Frazer and John Logie Baird. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Cecil Day-Lewis and W. H...
(now part of Lomond School
Lomond School
Lomond School is an independent co-educational day and boarding school in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It was formed from a merger in 1977 between Larchfield Academy and St Bride's School for Girls...
) in Helensburgh; the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (which later became the University of Strathclyde
University of Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde , Glasgow, Scotland, is Glasgow's second university by age, founded in 1796, and receiving its Royal Charter in 1964 as the UK's first technological university...
); and the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
. His degree course was interrupted by World War I and he never returned to graduate.
Television experiments
Although the development of television was the result of work by many inventors, Baird was a prominent pioneer and made major advances in the field. Particularly in Britain, many historians credit Baird with being the first to produce a live, moving, greyscale television image from reflected light. Baird achieved this, where other inventors had failed, by obtaining a better photoelectric cell and improving the signal conditioningSignal conditioning
In electronics, signal conditioning means manipulating an analog signal in such a way that it meets the requirements of the next stage for further processing...
from the photocell and the video amplifier.
Between 1902 and 1907, Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn was a German-born physicist, mathematician and inventor, who was of Jewish ancestry...
invented and built the first successful signal-conditioning circuits for image transmission. The circuits overcame the image-destroying lag effect that is part of selenium photocells. Korn's compensation circuit allowed him to send still pictures by telephone or wireless between countries and even over oceans, while his circuit operated without benefit of electronic amplification. Korn's success at transmitting halftone still images suggested that such compensation circuits might work in television. Baird was the direct beneficiary of Korn's research and success.
In his first attempts to develop a working television system, Baird experimented with the Nipkow disk
Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk , also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, geometrically operating image scanning device, invented by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow...
. Paul Nipkow had invented this scanning disc system in 1884. Television historian Albert Abramson calls Nipkow's patent "the master television patent." Nipkow's work is important because Baird and many others chose to develop it into a broadcast medium.
In early 1923, and in poor health, Baird moved to 21 Linton Crescent, Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
, on the south coast of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and rented a workshop in Queen's Arcade in the town. Baird built what was to become the world's first working television set using items including 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. In February 1924, he demonstrated to the Radio Times that a semi-mechanical analogue television system was possible by transmitting moving silhouette images. In July of the same year, he received a 1000-volt electric shock but fortunately survived with only a burnt hand. His landlord, a Mr Tree, asked him to quit his workshop and he moved to upstairs rooms in Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where he made a technical breakthrough. Baird gave the first public demonstration of moving silhouette images by television at Selfridges
Selfridges
Selfridges, AKA Selfridges & Co, is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK and was opened on 15 March 1909.More recently, three other stores have been...
department store in London in a three-week series of demonstrations beginning on 25 March 1925.
In his laboratory on 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed "Stooky Bill
Stooky Bill
Stooky Bill was the name given to the head of a ventriloquist dummy that John Logie Baird used in his early experiments to transmit a televised image between rooms in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street, London....
" in a 30-line vertically scanned image, at five pictures per second. 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. Looking for publicity, Baird visited the Daily Express newspaper to promote his invention. The news editor was terrified: 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."
First public demonstrations
On 26 January 1926, Baird repeated the transmission for members of the Royal InstitutionRoyal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
and a reporter from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street
Frith Street
Frith Street is in the Soho area of London, England. To the north is Soho Square and to the south is Shaftesbury Avenue. The street crosses Old Compton Street, Bateman Street and Romilly Street.- History :...
in the Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
district of London. By this time, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 pictures per second. It was the first demonstration of a television system that could broadcast live moving images with tone graduation.
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 a commutator to alternate their illumination. That same year he also demonstrated stereoscopic television.
In 1932, Baird was the first person in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
to demonstrate ultra-short wave transmission. (Today, we refer to "ultra short waves" as the VHF band.) Contrary to some reports, these transmissions were far from the first VHF telecasts. In 1931, the US Federal Radio Commission
Federal Radio Commission
The Federal Radio Commission was a government body that regulated radio use in the United States from its creation in 1926 until its replacement by the Federal Communications Commission in 1934...
allocated VHF television bands. From 1931 to 1933, station W9XD in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...
transmitted some of the first VHF television signals. The station's 45-line, triply interlaced pictures used the U. A. Sanabria
Ulises Armand Sanabria
Ulises Armand Sanabria was born in southern Chicago of Puerto Rican and French-American parents.-Career:...
television technology.
Broadcasting
In 1927, Baird transmitted a long-distance television signal over 438 miles (704.9 km) of telephone line between London and GlasgowGlasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
; Baird transmitted the world's first long-distance television pictures to the Central Hotel at Glasgow Central Station.
This transmission was Baird's response to a 225-mile, long-distance telecast between stations of AT&T Bell Labs. The Bell stations were in New York and Washington, DC. The earlier telecast took place in April 1927, a month before Baird's demonstration.
Baird 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 the first television programme for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. In November 1929, Baird and Bernard Natan
Bernard Natan
Bernard Natan was a Franco-Romanian film director and actor of the 1920s and 1930s. He is said by one historian to be one of the earliest pornographic film directors and porn stars whose name was known to the public. After his alleged adult film career, Natan moved into mainstream cinema...
established France's first television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
company, Télévision-Baird-Natan. He televised the first live transmission of the Epsom Derby
Epsom Derby
The Derby Stakes, popularly known as The Derby, internationally as the Epsom Derby, and under its present sponsor as the Investec Derby, is a Group 1 flat horse race in Great Britain open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies...
in 1931. He demonstrated a theatre television system, with a screen two feet by five feet (60 cm by 150 cm), in 1930 at the London Coliseum
Coliseum Theatre
The London Coliseum is an opera house and major performing venue on St. Martin's Lane, central London. It is one of London's largest and best equipped theatres and opened in 1904, designed by theatrical architect Frank Matcham , for impresario Oswald Stoll...
, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. By 1939 he had improved his theatre projection system to televise a boxing match on a screen 15 ft (4.6 m) by 12 ft (3.7 m).
From 1929 to 1932, 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 at 16 Portland Place. On 3 November 1936, from Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
located on the high ground of the north London ridge, 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 Baird system at the time involved an intermediate film process, where footage was shot on cinefilm which was rapidly developed and scanned. The trial was due to last 6 months but the BBC were forced to cease broadcasts with the Baird system in February 1937, due to a disastrous fire in the Baird studio. 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.
Baird's television systems were replaced by the electronic television system developed by the newly-formed company EMI-Marconi
Marconi Company
The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company...
under Isaac Shoenberg
Isaac Shoenberg
Sir Isaac Shoenberg was an electronic engineer born in Russia who was best known for his role in history of television....
, which had access to patents developed by Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes...
and RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
. Similarly, 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. Baird used the Farnsworth tubes instead to scan cinefilm, in which capacity they proved serviceable though prone to dropouts and other problems. Farnsworth himself came to London to Baird's Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
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.
Baird made many contributions to the field of electronic television after mechanical systems had taken a back seat. In 1939, he showed colour television using a cathode ray tube
Cathode ray tube
The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
in front of which revolved a disc fitted with colour filters, a method taken up by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
and RCA in the United States. In 1941, he patented and demonstrated a system of three-dimensional television at a definition of 500 lines. On 16 August 1944, he gave the world's first demonstration of a fully electronic colour television display. His 600-line colour system used triple interlacing, using six scans to build each picture. 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 quality on this system would have been comparable to today's HDTV. 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 it was three decades until the introduction of the 625-line system in 1964 and (PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
) 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.
Other inventions
Some of Baird's early inventions were not fully successful. In his twenties he tried to create diamonds by heating graphiteGraphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
and shorted out Glasgow's electricity supply. Later Baird perfected 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. He also invented a thermal undersock (the Baird undersock), which was moderately successful. Baird suffered from cold feet, and after a number of trials, he found that an extra layer of cotton inside the sock provided warmth.
Baird's numerous other developments demonstrated his particular talent at invention. He was a visionary and began to dabble with electricity. In 1928, he developed an early video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
recording device, which he dubbed Phonovision
Phonovision
Phonovision is a proof of concept format and experiment for recording a mechanical television signal on phonograph records. The format was developed in the late 1920s in London by Scottish television pioneer John Logie Baird...
. The system consisted of a large Nipkow disk attached by a mechanical linkage to a conventional 78-rpm record-cutting lathe. The result was a disc that could record and play back a 30-line video signal. Technical difficulties with the system prevented its further development, but some of the original phonodiscs have been preserved, and have since been restored by Donald McLean, a Scottish electrical engineer. Baird's other developments were in fibre-optics
Optical fiber
An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...
, radio direction finding, infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
night viewing and radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
. There is discussion about his exact contribution to the development of radar, for his wartime defence projects have never been officially acknowledged by the UK 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. The radar contribution is in dispute. According to some experts, Baird's "noctovision" is not radar. Unlike radar (except Doppler 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.
Later years
From December 1944 until his death two years later, Baird lived at a house in Station Road, Bexhill-on-SeaBexhill-on-Sea
Bexhill-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England, within the District of Rother. It has a population of approximately 40,000...
, East Sussex
East Sussex
East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...
, immediately north of the station itself. Baird died in Bexhill on 14 June 1946 after a stroke in February of that year. The old house was demolished in 2007. The Sea Road-Station Road skyline now features a new block of 51 flats on the site, renamed "Baird Court".
John Logie Baird is buried with his mother, father and wife in Helensburgh Cemetery
Helensburgh Cemetery
Helensburgh Cemetery is a 19th-century burial ground on the Old Luss Road in Helensburgh, Argyll, Scotland. Together with its boundary walls, lodge, gatepiers and gates it is designated as a Category B listed building by Historic Scotland....
.
Further reading
Books- Baird, John Logie, Television and Me: The Memoirs of John Logie Baird. Edinburgh: Mercat PressMercat PressMercat Press is an imprint of the Edinburgh, Scotland-based publishing company Birlinn Limited. It was established in 1970 as a subsidiary of the bookseller James Thin, and published facsimile editions of out-of-print Scottish works, such as the five-volume The Castellated and Domestic Architecture...
, 2004. ISBN 1-84183-063-1 - Burns, Russell, John Logie Baird, television pioneer. London: The Institution of Electrical EngineersInstitution of Electrical EngineersThe Institution of Electrical Engineers was a British professional organisation of electronics, electrical, manufacturing, and Information Technology professionals, especially electrical engineers. The I.E.E...
, 2000. ISBN 0-85296-797-7 - Kamm, Antony, and Malcolm Baird, John Logie Baird: A Life. Edinburgh: NMS Publishing, 2002. ISBN 1-901663-76-0
- McArthur, Tom, and Peter Waddell, The Secret Life of John Logie Baird. London: Hutchinson, 1986. ISBN 0-09-158720-4.
- McLean, Donald F., Restoring Baird's Image. The Institute of Electrical Engineers, 2000. ISBN 0-85296-795-0.
- Rowland, John, The Television Man: The Story of John Logie Baird. New York: Roy Publishers, 1967.
- Tiltman, Ronald Frank, Baird of Television. New York: Arno Press, 1974. (Reprint of 1933 ed.) ISBN 0-405-06061-0.
Patents
External links
- "Television for Millions" Popular Mechanics, September 1935
- The Baird Television Website
- Baird on DigitalCentury.com
- Mechanical TV: Baird Television
- Baird bio on BBC site
- John Logie Baird biography at BFI Screenonline
- How to build a Baird televisor - also contains many detailed references to Baird's history
- John Logie Baird's entry on Helensburgh Heroes web site
- John Logie Baird - Gizmohighway Technology Guide
- Narrow Bandwidth Television Association
- Phonovision
- John Logie Baird biography at Virtual Scotland
- Hawestv.com Technical history. Describes mechanical TV viewing. Controversies about TV inventions. Schematics. Build a mechanical TV.
- Television Apparatus, US patent, filed 1926.
- Method of and Means for Transmitting Signals, US patent for Baird's "Noctovision" infrared television system, filed 1927.
- Television Apparatus and the Like, US patent for Baird's colour television system, filed 1929 (in UK, 1928).n]
- The Man Who Invented Television (knol)
- "Electron Camera Shoots Television Images" Popular Mechanics, June 1935
- "London Station To Serve Ten Million People" Popular Mechanics, June 1935