BBC - Primary History - Famous People - John Logie Baird John Logie Baird Why is Baird famous? What Baird did John Logie Baird was a pioneer of television. Other people helped to invent television (TV). But Baird was the first to show TV pictures to the world. When did he live? Baird was born in 1888. He was born before there was radio or television. There were few cars on the roads, and no planes in the skies. When Baird died in 1946, there were rockets, jet planes, the first computers - and television. TV changed the world Baird's television showed 'live' pictures in people's homes. TV today works on a different system from Baird's. However, by showing that TV was possible, Baird helped change the world. Today, almost every home has television. Growing up Baird's family John Logie Baird was born in Scotland. He lived in the small fishing town of Helensburgh. His father John was a Christian church minister. His mother, Jessie Inglis, was from Glasgow. John was born on 13 August 1888.

He had an older brother James, and two older sisters, Annie and Jean (known as 'Tottie'). School days John hated school. He was often ill, so he missed lessons. He did not like games lessons, after which the boys had to take cold baths! He saved his pocket money to buy a camera. He was excited by cameras, cars and telephones. The young engineer When John was 12, he made his own telephone. He joined his phone to the homes of four friends, by hanging wires from trees and chimneys. He had to take down his wires after the driver of a horse bus had his hat knocked off! John and his friend Godfrey made a glider . Somehow it flew off the roof with John in it! He was lucky not to be badly hurt when the glider crashed in the garden. Ahead of the times The Bairds' house was the first in the town to have electricity. At 13, John built a generator , to make electric power to light the house. Sometimes he behaved like an absent-minded professor. How his cousins laughed when he scratched his head, holding a sticky porridge spoon! Becoming an inventor Student days Baird liked science. He loved stories about the future.

One day people might send pictures through the air. Radio (then called 'wireless') did this with sounds. Why not pictures? In 1906, aged 18, Baird went to college in Glasgow to study engineering. It took him eight years to finish, because he had time off for illness. Making money World War I began in 1914. Baird tried to join the Army, but was unfit. So he worked in a factory . He did not like it, and felt sorry for factory workers. He went into business on his own, hoping to get rich. Baird in business Baird sold medicines. He invented a shaving razor made of glass (so it would not rust). He sold extra warm socks for soldiers. He was still not well. His doctor told him he needed sunshine. So Baird went to the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean. He started a factory making jam and pickles. Mystery experiments People passing Baird's house were puzzled. What were those strange flashing lights? Baird was busy with experiments . He was trying to send pictures through the air. Back to London Back in Britain, Baird started a shop in London.

He sold a soap called 'Baird's Speedy Cleaner'. In 1923, he moved to Hastings, beside the sea. One day he wrote to a friend, 'I have invented a means of seeing by wireless [radio]'. His friend said, 'stick to soap'! Moving pictures By the 1920s people could watch films in cinemas. The films were 'silent' (no sound). At home, people could listen to the 'wireless', but only 1 million people in Britain had radios. No one had yet seen moving pictures at home - television. Baird's first TV picture To make his first TV in 1924, Baird used boxes, biscuit tins, sewing needles, card, and the motor from an electric fan. His first TV picture showed a cross cut out of card. Baird's TV used spinning discs. His idea was to scan an image (the cross) with a spinning disc with tiny holes. Light from the image came through the holes in flashes. Baird then changed the flashes of light into electric signals. He sent the signals to a second spinning disc with tiny light bulbs instead of holes.

The bulbs flashed to make a fuzzy TV picture of the cross. Baird shows the world In 1925, Baird made better TV pictures of a ventriloquist's doll. William Taynton, an office boy , sat in front of Baird's camera. William was the first person to appear on TV! Baird showed his television at the Selfridges store in London. Forty famous scientists packed into his London office to see it. TV across the sea In May 1927, Baird sent pictures from London to Glasgow, through the phone line. In 1928 he sent the first TV pictures under the sea, from Britain to America. Baird's first television pictures were black and white. Soon he was making colour TV, with pictures of flowers, strawberries, and a man in a red and white scarf. The television age Secret work Baird worked with a small team of helpers. Some days he went off to do mysterious tests on hilltops. Some people said he was doing top-secret work on radar. How to watch TV? In 1929, the BBC started to test TV, in broadcasts . Would people buy TV sets to watch at home?

Or would they watch large-screen TV in cinemas? Baird wanted to televise 'live' sport in cinemas, and in 1931, he invented a TV camera for 'outside broadcasts'. An electronic rival Baird was not the only inventor working on television. Other engineers were also busy. They had made a rival electronic TV system. It gave better pictures, with a smaller camera. The first TV service The BBC tested both TV systems in 1936. Then disaster! In a fire at the London TV studio , Baird's equipment and important papers were burned. Baird was out of the race. In 1937, the BBC chose the Marconi-EMI electronic TV system. The world's first regular TV service started. The television age had begun. New ideas Baird did not give up. He tried selling large-screen TVs to cinemas. His firm made and sold electronic TVs. He went on trying new ideas. What happened to Baird? World War II Only 20,000 homes in Britain had a television by 1939. That was when World War II began. Television was shut down.

Baird's wife, Margaret, and their two children, were evacuated to the country. Their home in London was blown up by a bomb. Baird had to live in hotels, but went on working. What did Baird hope for? The government asked Baird to help plan television after the war. He hoped to give people colour television, in 3-D . He dreamed of big-screen TVs with high-definition (HD) pictures. Baird dies World War II ended in 1945. Television started again in 1946. Baird was planning to televise a victory parade that summer. Sadly, he fell ill, and died in June 1946. He was 58 years old. He was buried in his home town, in Scotland. Why do we remember Baird? Today TV brings us news, education, sport and entertainment. Events such as the Olympic Games are watched all over the world. John Logie Baird helped make this possible. He was one of Scotland's greatest engineers.

John Logie Baird and Television - History Learning Site John Logie Baird and Television Citation: C N Trueman "John Logie Baird and Television" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 17 Mar 2015. 16 Aug 2016. John Logie Baird and Television John Logie Baird and the invention of the television are part of History. But the idea of the television did not start with Logie Baird in the 1920’s. In the late C19th, a number of scientists had made important discoveries that Baird would use in his first version of a television. Henri Becquerel found that light could be changed into electricity and, importantly, Ferdinand Braun had invented the cathode ray tube. By the 1920’s there were 50 serious attempts to invent the television from Russia, America, Germany, Britain and Japan. Many researchers had well resourced and staffed laboratories but the man who invented the television did not. John Logie Baird was born in 1888 near Glasgow. He had made money selling socks and soap.

This business he sold off to follow his dream of inventing a television. It became an obsession and to survive he had to borrow money from friends and use whatever materials he could including scraps. By 1925, he was ready to give the first public display of a working television. The chosen place was Selfridges in Oxford Street, London. Shoppers saw slightly blurred but recognisable images of letters. John Logie Baird with his television In 1927, Baird demonstrated colour television and a video-recording system he called a “Phonovision”. In 1928, Baird made the first transatlantic television transmission and one year later he started regular 30-line mechanical broadcasts. In 1936, the BBC started the world’s first regular high-definition service from Alexandra Palace using the Baird system, though it was abandoned one year later in favour of a system developed by Marconi-EMI. BY 1939, 20,000 television sets were in use in Great Britain, just 14 years after Baird’s first public demonstration of his system at work.

In 1940, Baird gave a demonstration of a high-definition full colour stereo television. The editor of the “Manchester Guardian” said at the beginning of the C20th when the word television was thought of that “the word (television) is half-Greek and half-Latin. No good will come of it.” One of the leading researchers into television in the 1930’s, Issac Shoenberg, told his research team (who had invented the world’s first practical television camera) that they “had invented the world’s biggest time-waster of all time.” Why did John Logie Baird invent television? | Reference.com Why did John Logie Baird invent television? A: Quick Answer According to a BBC history article, John Logie Baird invented television because for many decades it had been a preoccupation of many scientists and inventors, and he had the natural ingenuity to accomplish the task. A biography of John Baird on Virtual Scotland, the official Scottish tourist website, further states that Baird's success was due to his perseverance in both the experimental and business phases of the project.

Full Answer Baird became preoccupied with constructing a working television shortly after World War I, when he moved to the south coast of England. Setting himself up in a small workshop, he created the first working model out of odds and ends that included a tea chest, a biscuit tin, a toy electric motor, some bicycle light lenses, a pair of scissors, glue and sealing wax. In 1924, he transmitted a flickering image across the span of several feet. In 1925, he created the first real television picture in grayscale, first using a ventriloquist's dummy and then a human face. In early 1926, he demonstrated his device before 50 scientists. In 1927, he transmitted a television picture 438 miles through telephone lines from London to Glasgow, and in the same year he started the Baird Television Development Company. In 1928, his company was the first to transmit television images transatlantic between London and New York, as well as transmit television signals to a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. In the same year, he gave the world's first demonstration of color television.

Eventually, in the 1930s, a competing television system created by Marconi Electric and Musical Industries was adopted by the BBC and supplanted Baird's system. Nevertheless, he is widely acknowledged as a significant pioneer in the television industry. John Logie Baird | Biography, Inventions and Facts John Logie Baird John Logie Baird invented “Television” John Logie Baird was a Scottish inventor and one of the pioneers of the invention of television. Baird was born in 1888 in Helensburgh, Scotland, and was the youngest child of the Reverend John Baird and Jessie Morrison Inglis. He showed signs of resourcefulness even as a child, when he developed a small scale telephone exchange connecting his house with the neighboring ones. He studied at the Technical College in Glasgow but could not finish his degree due to the outbreak of World War I. Due to his persistent ill health, he was not deemed fit for military service, so he worked as the superintendent engineer at the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company. Baird briefly dabbled in other business, and moved abroad for a short period of time before returning to London in 1920.

It was then that he started to experiment with television. He was living in near poverty and had to borrow money from friends and family, while living in an attic. Yet, his obsession was such that he kept at it and was always sure that he would eventually succeed. Many inventors were keen on doing the same, including one named Arthur Korn, who had successfully transmitted still images up to that point. Baird did not have very sophisticated equipment at his disposal; in fact his “equipment” included an assortment of odds and ends such as a discarded hatbox, a pair of scissors, darning needles, bicycle lights and sealing wax. By 1925, Baird had developed his first working model and gave a public demonstration at Selfridges in Oxford Street, London. He repeated this demonstration, in slightly better quality, for the Royal Institution in 1926. He also demonstrated the world’s first color transmission on July 3, 1928. In 1927, Baird transmitted his first long distance television signal over a distance of 438 miles of telephone lines between London and Glasgow.

Baird was not the first to claim this feat, as the same had already been demonstrated a month earlier by AT&T Bell Labs between New York and Washington, DC. Baird set up the “Baird Television Development Company Ltd” which made the first transatlantic transmission from London to New York in 1928. This company also broadcasted the first television program for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and continued to do so between 1929 to 1932. Baird helped to establish the first television company of France and also worked to synchronize the transmission of sound and vision so they would appear at the same time. In the 1930s, Baird’s mechanical television was replaced by electronic television technology developed by the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi . Baird made several important contributions to this area of technology as well, including developing and patenting a system of three-dimensional television, and a proposed “Telechrome electronic colour system” which would have been today’s equivalent of Hi-Definition or HDTV. Baird also made contributions in other fields of science, including fibre-optics, radio direction finding, and infrared night viewing.

Baird got married at the age of 43 to a South African pianist named Margaret Albu, with whom he had two children. He died in Helensburgh in June 1946 and is buried at the cemetery there. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his contributions to the development and advancement of television. BBC - History - John Logie Baird z John Logie Baird © Baird was a Scottish engineer, most famous for being the first person to demonstrate a working television. John Logie Baird was born on 14 August 1888 in Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland, the son of a clergyman. Dogged by ill health for most of his life, he nonetheless showed early signs of ingenuity, rigging up a telephone exchange to connect his bedroom to those of his friends across the street. His studies at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College were interrupted by the outbreak of World War One. Rejected as unfit for the forces, he served as superintendent engineer of the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company. When the war ended he set himself up in business, with mixed results.

Baird then moved to the south coast of England and applied himself to creating a television, a dream of many scientists for decades. His first crude apparatus was made of odds and ends, but by 1924 he managed to transmit a flickering image across a few feet. On 26 January 1926 he gave the world's first demonstration of true television before 50 scientists in an attic room in central London. In 1927, his television was demonstrated over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow, and he formed the Baird Television Development Company. (BTDC). In 1928, the BTDC achieved the first transatlantic television transmission between London and New York and the first transmission to a ship in mid-Atlantic. He also gave the first demonstration of both colour and stereoscopic television. In 1929, the German post office gave him the facilities to develop an experimental television service based on his mechanical system, the only one operable at the time. Sound and vision were initially sent alternately, and only began to be transmitted simultaneously from 1930.

However, Baird's mechanical system was rapidly becoming obsolete as electronic systems were developed, chiefly by Marconi-EMI in Britain and America. Although he had invested in the mechanical system in order to achieve early results, Baird had also been exploring electronic systems from an early stage. Nevertheless, a BBC committee of inquiry in 1935 prompted a side-by-side trial between Marconi-EMI's all-electronic television system, which worked on 405 lines to Baird's 240. Marconi-EMI won, and in 1937 Baird's system was dropped. Baird died on 14 June 1946 in Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex. John Baird related subjects Achievement John Logie Baird is remembered as the inventor of mechanical television, radar and fiber optics. Successfully tested in a laboratory in late 1925 and unveiled with much fanfare in London in early 1926, mechanical television technology was quickly usurped by electronic television, the basis of modern video technology. Nonetheless, Baird's achievements, including making the first trans-Atlantic television transmission, were singular and critical scientific accomplishments.

Lonely, driven, tireless and often poor, the native Scot defined the pioneering spirit of scientific inquiry. During his long career, John Baird created a host of television technologies. Among them, phonovision, a forerunner of the video recorder (which largely still relies on mechanical scanning); noctovision, an infra-red spotting system for "seeing" in the dark; open-air television, a theater-projection system; stereoscopic color TV; and the first high definition color TV. According to present-day TV historians, Baird only pursued mechanical scanning to get a television system working as quickly as possible. He changed to electronic scanning in the early 1930s and refined the system to a high degree. Before he died in 1946, Baird was drafting plans for a television with 1,000 lines of resolution and he had earlier patents for television with up to 1,700 lines of resolution using interlacing technology. The world would not catch up with him until 1990 when the Japanese introduced a TV with 1125 lines of resolution per frame.

Biography Born in 1888 in Helensburgh, Scotland, Baird learned a Calvinist work ethic from his father, a Presbyterian minister. Not inclined toward the clergy or the sea, Baird realized he could do little to support himself in his homeland. Like so many other young Scots of his era, he eventually sought his fortune in London, though some of his early, highly significant research was conducted on the south coast of England. For many years, Baird worked quietly in business, but his talents and passions never ran toward a professional career. Fascinated by mechanics, motors and electricity, he voraciously read technical books and popular magazines like Wireless World and Wireless Weekly. In one of these he encountered the word television - coined by Constantin Perskyi at the International Electricity Congress of 1900 in Paris. Literally meaning "to see from a distance," television was the latest term for an concept that had been seriously discussed since the mid-19th century. Baird became intoxicated with the idea of a machine that could transmit images of events as they occurred across the world. Many solutions had been proposed, but Baird found the work of German inventor Paul Nipkow particularly intriguing.

In 1884 Nipkow patented a primitive television device called the Elektrisches Teleskop. At the core of this apparatus was a disc punctured with a spiral pattern of 24 holes. As the disc spun, light reflected from a subject passed through the holes and stimulated a photo-sensitive selenium cell. The cell, in turn, produced an electric current which charged a light source in a receiver. In front of this spun another disc, perfectly synchronized with the one in the transmitter. Light passing from the disc was viewed through an eye piece. The result was a flickering reproduction of the transmitted image. As simple and elegant as his idea was, Nipkow had little success with it. The necessary means of synchronism and signal amplification were beyond the technology of his day. Reading about Nipkow's idea before the First World War, Baird supposed it would be easy to perfect. In fact, he was surprised to learn that no one had yet created a working television system. Ignorance can be a worthy ally for ambitious endeavors. Baird would face years of technical challenges, setbacks, and personal frustration before he finally created a working television. No money and a great idea.

Spending his days in a tedious business career left Baird little time. He tinkered at night, but made scarce progress. Upon returning from a trip to Trinidad in 1920, he by chance met an old friend, Captain O. G. Hutchinson. Baird breathlessly told him about his "great idea." His enthusiasm was contagious. Hutchinson offered to help him raise money for research.Then, in late 1922, he became gravely ill and was forced to quit his job. He began working on his television project in a little town about 60 miles south of London. Living on meager savings, he became disheveled, shaggy-haired and sallow, and his clothes wore thin. He mended them with crude patches and carried on his thankless research. Financially destitute much of the time, Baird gathered a few magnets, a vacuum tube, and some odds-and-ends, and with the continued financial help of Hutchinson and local volunteer radio amateurs and other helpers, began piecing together a dream Many of the limitations that thwarted Nipkow now plagued Baird. Although selenium cells had improved in sensitivity, their impulses could not be sufficiently amplified for image reproduction.

(Eventually this problem was solved with thermionic valve amplifiers, but they were years away). He considered photoelectric cells and neon tubes, but encountered the same dead ends. Additionally, Nipkow's old Achilles heel, synchronization, was as problematic as ever. Even state of the art devices used for high-speed multi-plex telegraphy were not suitable for television. Baird worked tirelessly to overcome these obstacles. Aware that other scientists with greater funds were at work, he raced to beat them. After World War I, an American inventor named Charles Jenkins patented a system with some similarity to Nipkow's and demonstrated a crude television for two influential science magazine editors. They were not impressed and Jenkin's achievement went barely noticed by the public. Sealing wax and silhouettes: the Televisor. Baird filed a patent for his television design in July of 1923. But it was not until 1924 that he had an actual working prototype. Dubbed the "Televisor," it was a Rube Goldberg-like apparatus. Using an old tea chest as a base, he mounted a motor and attached a home-made Nipkow disc - a cardboard circle cut from a hat box.

A darning needle became a spindle, and a discarded biscuit box made a suitable lamp housing. Apart from the motor, his greatest investments were a few bull's-eye lenses, purchased for four pence a piece. Glued together with sealing wax and string, it was a precarious contraption, but it worked. In his quarters, he managed to transmit a silhouette of a Maltese cross two or three yards to a receiver. Although crude, the images could not have been more beautiful to Baird. They proved his basic assumptions were correct. In August 1924 he moved to London and in April of the following year he unveiled the Televisor at Selfridge's Department Store in London. Awed spectators gathered in a small dark room, straining to see the flickering image of a doll on a screen that was barely four by two inches. Although little more than a silhouette, the image represented a significant achievement. This was the first time a picture had been created from reflected light. In October 1925 he succeeded in transmitting full television in his small attic laboratory in Soho, London.These were the true television pictures which picked up reflected light and showed light and shade effects.

The first human being to be televised was a frightened teenage office boy, William Taynton, who had to be bribed to stay in front of the hot lights. Of course, television would not have much of a future unless it reproduced motion. Baird's early scanning discs and photoelectronics were simply too slow and insensitive to capture moving objects. But that quickly changed. On January 26, 1926 Baird demonstrated a fully working prototype of mechanical television to members of the Royal Institution at 22 Frith Street, Baird's residence and laboratory. This was the world's first demonstration of true television because it showed moving human faces with tonal gradients and detail. Far from perfect, the images flickered quite a bit, but the individuals on screen were fully recognizable. On the heels of this triumph, Baird was granted a transmitting license by the British Post Office. Two experimental television stations were established, one in London and one in a neighboring suburb. Funded by a handful of private investors, he continued to make breakthroughs. Using post office telephone lines, Baird sent a "cable" television transmission 438 miles from London to Glasgow in 1927.

The following year he transmitted images to the cellar of an amateur radio operator in Hartsdale, New York. It was the first transatlantic demonstration of television. >Baird and the BBC For some time Baird's exploits had captivated the popular imagination. The press hailed him as a visionary and criticized the BBC, still a fledgling radio broadcaster, as inept and behind the times. One journalist went so far as to suggest that the BBC be dismantled and replaced by Baird Television Limited. Considering him very much an outside competitor, the BBC turned down Baird's requests for a transmitting license. Baird rebutted by first threatening to make pirate television broadcasts in 1928, then actually making them from Berlin in 1929. The BBC soon relented and granted a license. The press criticism and Baird's guerrilla tactics gnawed at J.C.W. Reith, the BBC's general manager, and tainted his perception of Baird. Still, when Baird offered to demonstrate his invention for the BBC in 1929, Reith grudgingly accepted. Baird's system, he acquiesced, had potential.

It was the beginning of an uneasy relationship that lasted until 1935. In September of 1929, Baird, in association with the BBC, began a series of experimental television transmissions. Working from his cramped studio, the project was plagued with technical difficulties. The worst setback was the lack of synchronized sound. Because they had access to only one transmitter, pictures and sound were broadcast alternately. The pictures themselves were minutely small; no larger than a saucer, even when magnified. Anxious to create a commercially viable system, the BBC pressured Baird to perfect the Televisor. They wanted a simple product that could be manufactured cheaply and widely distributed. But Baird's mind leap-frogged to ever more fantastic ideas: color television (demonstrated in 1928); big screen TV; and open air projections for large audiences. BBC management grew uneasy. Baird saw the Televisor as a prototype, not a finished product. It was replete with bugs and problems. Although BBC engineers had solved the sound synchronization glitch in 1930, the device was still crude; its picture flickering and tiny.

In its current state, the Televisor could be no more than a novelty for a handful of amateur radio enthusiasts. Reluctantly, Baird prepared to mass produce the Televisor. Short of capital, he sought financing from Gaumont British, a formidable conglomerate holding company that owned a large chain of movie theaters and was very interested in showing large screen television. After that, the future of Baird Television passed forever beyond his control. Produced in kit-form, some 20,000 Baird Televisors sold across England and the Continent. It seemed that the mechanical system might have a foothold in the coveted European market. But the BBC was already studying a rival system based on the work of Vladimir Zworykin. Lost in a vacuum: The Iconoscope comes of age. In the 1920s, a number of American companies began developing electronic image scanners based on the cathode ray tube. In 1933 Zworykin, working for RCA, invented a revolutionary device called the Iconoscope. Delivering superior resolution with almost no irritating flicker, the Iconoscope was a formidable challenger to the humble Nipkow disc.

In 1933 Baird was told that the BBC would end its relationship with him the following year. Mechanical television, they said, was no match for an all-electronic scanning system. In an arrangement with the newly incorporated EMI, the BBC developed their own version of the new technology. In 1935, EMI unveiled the Emitron camera tube, a device that was uncannily similar to Zworykin's Iconoscope. This was no accident. RCA and EMI had a cross-licensing arrangement, so it is likely that they shared technology. Their goal was to dominate the global market with a single television system. Upstarts like Baird would simply disappear in their wake. A tale of two tubes: Farnsworth's Image Dissector Baird was determined that mechanical television could work. He was, of course, aware of the advances made with cathode ray tubes, but had neither the inclination or financing to pursue it. But Gaumont British had other plans. Anxious about the potential of the Emitron tube, they urged Baird to seek a licensing agreement from Philo T. Farnsworth, a young American who created a device called the Image Dissector.

Farnsworth conceived his television system in 1923, while still in high school. Utilizing a cathode ray tube, his design predated Zworykin's Iconoscope by a decade. By 1927 the boy wonder had transmitted straight line images from his first Image Dissector. In 1934, the year he met Baird, he was deeply entangled in patent litigation suits with RCA. By licensing the Image Dissector in Great Britain, he hoped to sidestep RCA and claim a piece of the European market. Baird made a point to be present in London for Farnsworth's demonstration of the Image Dissector and was stunned by what he saw. The best resolution Baird had achieved was 180 lines per frame. Farnsworth's Image Dissector displayed an astounding 300 lines per frame. Gaumont British's executives were duly impressed. They signed an agreement with Farnsworth and gave Baird the task of putting the Image Dissector at the core of a new television system. Down in flames: the end of Baird TV Despite the compelling display, Baird was not an easy convert to electronic television.

He was convinced that his mechanical system could be synthesized with the Image Dissector to create a superior hybrid. In 1935 he succeeded in demonstrating a 700 line picture for the press. By 1936 Baird Television was in serious trouble because of BBC's growing preference for EMI. Though Baird's electro-mechanical TV now produced 240 lines per frame versus EMI's 405 line capability, witnesses said they could not see a difference between the two transmissions, possibly because the 405 system was on the wrong carrier wave. Nevertheless, the BBC was very close to penning an official contract with EMI. Housed in a studio in the Crystal Palace, Baird and his technicians were increasingly isolated. In 1937-38, Baird began to drift from the day-to-day operations of Baird Television. He preferred to work in his home studio where he could indulge his imagination, unconstrained by the politics of business.In a desperate move, Gaumont British brought Farnsworth to London. They hoped he could help Baird back on track before the BBC committed to EMI.

Not long after Farnsworth departed, the Crystal Palace burned to the ground in a fire that was likely caused by faulty wiring. Within days, EMI's television system was officially adopted by the BBC. Baird of England operated profitably for several years, manufacturing television receivers. Operating from a claustrophobic studio in a surviving section of the Crystal Palace, the inventor enjoyed the occasional triumph. In 1938 at the Dominion Theater, an audience of 3,000 watched color television images on a 12 X 9 foot screen. These were the first color pictures ever shown publicly. Yet even these highly public achievements could not change the reality of the market place. In 1940, Baird's company changed its name to Cinema Television. At the outbreak of war with Germany, the British government placed severe restrictions on TV signals, fearing that German bombers would use TV signals to home in on London. Eventually, the British used TV signals as a means of jamming enemy bomber guidance systems. Phoenix from the ashes: Don Quixote rides again Left with scarce resources and no hope of procuring benevolent corporate backers, Baird was on his own.

Financing research from his savings, he enjoyed a curious sense of freedom. Like the old London garret days, his work was fueled only by passion and insatiable curiosity. As Hitler raged across Europe, Great Britain poured its resources into the war effort. Electronic components became scarce and Baird had to forage for parts. As ever, his ambitions ran high. By proclaiming he would build the first commercially viable color television, he put himself in direct competition with American monoliths like RCA. Furthermore, he claimed the system would have 600-line pictures, nearly 200 more than EMI's 405-line standard. Baird at last abandoned mechanical systems in favor of electronics. But even here he left his own indelible mark. Images were created by scanning subjects with an intense beam of light from a cathode ray tube. The light passed through spinning colored filters before being relayed to photo-electric cells. A variation of the "flying-spot" scanning method he'd developed and patented in the '20s, it was a brilliant success. By interlacing several 200-line scans he achieved a 600-line picture.

In December of 1940 he demonstrated the television in his home before an influential group of journalists. Encouraged by their enthusiastic praise, Baird set to work on a stereoscopic color TV. Despite the significance of his accomplishments, neither this early form of high definition television or stereoscope were commercially produced. The systems championed by EMI and RCA would set the standard for decades to come. In 1943 Baird appeared before the Hankey Committee, a government task force examining the future of television. He encouraged them to consider high definition systems of a 1000 lines or more for post-war commercial development. He also urged them to pursue stereoscopic TV. In failing health, he no longer had the stamina to finish these projects, though he had succeeded in demonstrating all of them. The Hankey Committee's report mostly concurred and recommended the overturning of lesser standards put forth by the Selsdon Committee in 1937. Baird died in June of 1946. The work of John Logie Baird comprised a crucial break-through in television technology. Today, 95% of modern TV is pre-recorded, an approach recommended by Baird.

A large amount of contemporary TV utilizes the film scanning system of Rank-Cintel, which absorbed Baird's Cinema Television. Baird's single electronic gun CRT development work in 1945 was eventually followed in the design of the Sony Trinitron tube. In a manner that today seems commonplace, his initial mechanical solution was quickly supplanted by newer technology, but his inventive work continued and his legacy continues. Baird succeeded in perfecting visual transmission systems others had long abandoned. His single-minded tenacity proves that most obstacles are no greater than the limits of the imagination. Sources Author not Attributed; "John Logie Baird Demonstrates Fog-piercing 'Noctovisor' in England"; New York Times; 11 August 1929 Author not Attributed; "Demonstration of 'Tele-talkies'"; New York Times; 8 September 1929. Author Not Attributed; "Talking Film Transmitted in London by Baird Television Development Company"; New York Times; 20 August 1929. Author not Attributed; "Color Transmitted in London Demonstration of J.L.

Baird's System"; New York Times; 5 February 1938 Author not Attributed; "John Logie Baird Dies; Television Leader"; New York Times; 15 June 1946. Author not Attributed; "Television Pioneer"; New York Times Week in Review; 16 June 1946. Booksoe, R.W., "British Television: The Formative Years", IEE History of Series, Vol.7, Peter Peregrinus Ltd., London, 1986. Briggs, Asa; The BBC: The First 50 Years; New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Brown, Les; Les Brown's Encyclopedia of Television, 3rd Edition; Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1992. Burns, R. W., et al; International Conference on the History of Television-From Early Days to the Present; London: The Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1986. Dinsdale, Arthur; First Principles of Television; London: Chapman Hall Ltd., 1932 (Reprinted by Arno Press and the New York Times, 1971).

Fielding, Raymond, ed.; A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television; Berkeley Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967. "Sermons, Soap and Television", Royal Television Society, 1988. McArthur, Tom and Peter Waddell; Vision Warrior: The Hidden Achievement of John Logie Baird; Glasgow: A Scottish Falcon Book, The Orkney Press, 1990. O'Neil, Bill; "Baird's Clear Vision of the Future"; New Scientist; 15 December 1990. Ritchie, Michael; Please Stand By: A Prehistory of Television; Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1994. Schatzkin, Paul; "The Farnsworth Chronicles"; National Online Music Alliance, 1996 Smith, Anthony, ed.; Television: An International History; Publication Data Unavailable Wyver, John; The Moving Image: An International History of Film, Television and Video; Oxford, Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, BFI Publishing, 1989.

Wheen, Francis; Television: A History; London: Century Publishing, 1985 Chronology John Baird - Mechanical Television System By Mary Bellis Updated August 10, 2016. John Logie Baird was born on August 13th, 1888, in Helensburgh, Dunbarton, Scotland and died on June 14th, 1946, in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England. John Baird received a diploma course in electrical engineering at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (now called Strathclyde University), and studied towards his Bachelor of Science Degree in electrical engineering from the University of Glasgow, interrupted by the outbreak of W.W.I. John Baird - Mechanical Television System Baird is best remembered for inventing a mechanical television system . During the 1920's, John Baird and American Clarence W. Hansell patented the idea of using arrays of transparent rods to transmit images for television and facsimiles respectively. Baird's 30 line images were the first demonstrations of television by reflected light rather than back-lit silhouettes.

John Baird based his technology on Paul Nipkow's scanning disk idea and later developments in electronics. continue reading below our video Profile of John Baird John Baird Milestones The television pioneer created the first televised pictures of objects in motion (1924), the first televised human face (1925) and a year later he televised the first moving object image at the Royal Institution in London. His 1928 trans-atlantic transmission of the image of a human face was a broadcasting milestone. Color television (1928), stereoscopic television and television by infra-red light were all demonstrated by Baird before 1930. He successfully lobbied for broadcast time with the British Broadcasting Company, the BBC started broadcasting television on the Baird 30-line system in 1929. The first simultaneous sound and vision telecast was broadcast in 1930.

In July 1930, the first British Television Play was transmitted, "The Man with the Flower in his Mouth." In 1936, the British Broadcasting Corporation adopted television service using the electronic television technology of Marconi-EMI (the world's first regular high resolution service - 405 lines per picture), it was that technology that won out over Baird's system. John Logie Baird - Biography, Facts and Pictures John Logie Baird Early Life: John Logie Baird is a very famous Scottish inventor who was born in 1888 in Scotland. He played a vital role in the invention of the television and it was his invention of photomechanical television that broadcasted the transmission live for the first time ever. He studied at the University of Glasgow and also at Royal Technical College. It was due to his unstable health that he could not participate in World War I and he was enforced to give up his electric engineering post. After that he tried out many activities and tried to figure out his areas of interest as he had declared himself as a “Professional Amateur”. Advertisements Contributions and Achievements: It was after his nervous breakdown that he started paying attention to electronics.

Marconi’s explanation about the travelling of radio waves was his area of concentration. He was almost sure that visual signals could also be transmitted through the same process. With his firm believe he started working on his project. The basic design of Baird contained a scanning disk named Nipkow disk after its German inventor, Paul Nipkow, which was developed in 1884. This device was made up of a disk made out of cardboard that had square holes in it in series, spirally placed. The Nipkow disk scanned light and dark areas when it spun with the photoelectric cell. This process converted into electrical signals. When two such disks worked in synchronization, the signals were again translated into visual images. Baird made innovations in this idea of Nipkow and added a feature to it which could transmit signals through electromagnetic waves instead of cable wires. The innovation was not appreciated and financed much by the investors. Throughout this time, Baird took odd jobs such salesman for razor blade and a shoe shiner just to earn enough money to support himself and buy his tools. Many of his inventions involved the use of household items like string, bicycle lamps, cake tin and knitting needles etc.

Finally on October 2, 1925 he accomplished in transmitting the picture of the dummy of ventriloquist from his attic’s one end to another. He got really excited and ran to the nearest shop to convince a boy to be a part of his television transmission. This invention gave fame to Baird in a jiffy also arouse interest of the investors. A television signal was sent by him from London to Glasgow in 1927 and from London to New York later in 1928. The only problem was this design produced poor quality image. Vladimir Zworykin’s design of cathode ray tube substituted Baird’s design. Baird still helped in developing improved designs of televisions. He also helped with the colored television and large and wide screen projection which he thought would later be used for movie projection for public. Baird passed away in 1946 when he was 58. Advertisements How Heinrich Hertz Discovered Radio Waves Anaximander

Question: What did John Logie Baird invent?
Answer: Television