Stooky Bill
Encyclopedia
John Logie Baird
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...
used in his early experiments to transmit a televised
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
image between rooms in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street, London.
"Stooky" or "stookie" is Scots for stucco
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
or plaster of Paris, or for a plaster cast used to immobilise bone fractures. The term is also used someone who is slow-witted or awkward in his movements. The incandescent lights
Incandescent light bulb
The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe makes light by heating a metal filament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament is protected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with inert gas or evacuated. In a halogen lamp, a chemical process...
illuminating the subject to be televised generated so much heat that Baird couldn't use a human for the testing, so Stooky Bill was used. The exaggerated smiling black and white features of the dummy's face were necessary for the early trials. Eventually the hair became singed and the painted face became cracked by the heat.