JOHN LOGIE BAIRD 1888-1946

          John Logie Baird was born in 1888. His fa­ther was a graduate in Arts and Divinity of Glasgow University and had moved to Hel­ensburgh, a little town on the Firth of Clyde, to become minister in a small parish church. The boy respected his father and adorned his mother.

       After schooling in Helensburgh he was ac­cepted to study for an Associateship in Elec­trical Engineering at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, from where he gradu­ated in 1914. With further six months study at Glasgow University John was awarded the degree of В. Sc.*.

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*B. Sc. — Bachelor of Science; a title for someone who has a first university degree in a science subject.

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            In the middle of the course, war was declared on Germany and he volunteered for the Army, but after a medical examination was declared unfit.

        After graduation he got a job as Assistant Main Engineer with the Clyde Valley Elec­trical Company. But his inventive spirit was beginning to blossom.

            All his life Baird suffered from cold feet so it is perhaps not surprising that his thoughts turned to a way of alleviating this misery. From a wholesaler he bought six dozen pairs of unbleached half-hose. He sprinkled them with borax and put each pair in a large en­velope hearing the printed legend “The Baird Undersock — medicated, soft, absorbent, worn under the ordinary sock, it keeps the feet warm in winter and cool in summer. Ninepence per pair, post free”. For good measure he also enclosed a number of care­fully prepared “home-made” testimonials. He advertised his socks in “Glasgow Herald”, visited chemists and drapers, sold the first two dozen, and got orders for six dozen more. He employed “travellers” to sell his socks throughout Scotland and England — the fa­mous London store, “Selfridges”, bought six dozen. Business was booming. But ill health robbed him of success; he fell ill and the one-man business foundered. Baird decided to go abroad where the climate might be kinder to his troubled chest. He sailed for Port-of-Spain*.

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*Port-of-Spain — port and capital of Trinidad and Tobago, on the island of Trinidad.

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             Baird noticed that this island abounded with fresh fruits of all kinds — guavas, oranges, lemons, mangoes — and sugar cane. Why not make jams, preserves, and chutney? A quick vis­it to a scrap-merchant produced a large cop­per pan capable of holding one hundred weight of jam. A brick chimney inside a hut was hurriedly put together and the cauldron, filled with sugar and oranges was soon boiling merrily.

              Unfortunately the inhabitants of Port-of- Spain were no more interested in Baird’s jam than they were in his cotton goods. He packed the preserves into crates and sailed for England, setting himself up in a small shop in London. Londoners didn’t take to his jams and chutneys so he gave up busi­ness and sold the lot to a sausage-maker for 15 pounds.

              His entrepreneurial spirit was still alive, and he moved into soap. But it too came to an end when a lady washed her child’s bot­tom with “Baird’s Speedy Cleaner” and angrily invited him to inspect the results. Baird was forced to admit that it looked like boiled lobster and in vain protested that his soap was for cleaning floors, not baby’s bottoms.

              After that Baird retired to Hastings hop­ing that the climate would suit his health. It did more than that. This was to be the most exciting and productive period of his life; but it did not have an auspicious start. He invented a glass razor-blade with which he almost severed his jugular vein; he was equally unsuccessful with pneumatic-soled shoes which depended for their buoyancy on two balloons inside each. When he tried out the shoes, they almost catapulted him over the cliffs of Hastings.

          Then came his major breakdown. Baird him­self has said that while walking on the cliffs thoughts came back to him about the possi­bility of television. There is some circum­stantial evidence that he was already tink­ering and experimenting with TV while in Port-of-Spain. Although Baird was always more than willing to laugh at himself and to talk and write about his escapades, he was remarkably secretive when it came to his television work. There were many in­vestigations in the field including scientists from different countries. It does not really matter now where Baird developed his idea.The important thing is that he did so and was the first man in the world to produce working sets.

            Soon he was translating his thoughts into action and his room was overflowing with hat boxes, tea chests, darning needles, seal­ing wax, glue, batteries, valves and trans­formers. He transmitted a shadow of a card­board box across the room. It was a simple beginning, but it was a beginning.

           Baird was elated and with health much im­proved he left Hastings for London. His methods improved to such an extent that he was able to put on a three-weeks demon­strations in Harrods’ stores. In return he got 60 pounds. He tried to involve the gi­ant Marconi* radio company in television but they weren’t interested.

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*Marconi, Guglielmo (1874-1937) — an Italian inventor who formed the world’s first radio company in 1897 and shared the Nobel prize for physics in 1909.

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            On 27^th January he demonstrated his inven­tion before an audience of scientists at the Royal Institution in London. In the same year with the help of the BBC* he carried out transmissions from his flat to the BBC studios and back again.

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*BBC — British Broadcasting Corporation; the British radio and television broadcasting company that is paid by the state, not by advertisers.

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           In addition, using infra-red light, he was able to transmit pic­tures of people sitting in total darkness. He named it “Noctavision”. He moved his ex­periments to more spacious rooms in Motograph House, near Leicester Square and with two friends he formed “Television Ltd”.

             In 1928, using a disc with three spirals of hotels, each covered with a red, blue, or green, filter, he demonstrated colour tele­vision in Glasgow. He was also experiment­ing with, and demonstrating, stereoscopic television.

              In the same year, using a short-wave trans­mitter, he sent a television picture in the USA and to a ship, the Berengaria in mid-Atlantic. He launched “Baird International Television” with a capital of 1 million pounds to exploit television commercially.

         Following a number of “secret” tests in 1928 the BBC carried out its first experimental transmission in 1928. It was seen by 30 people in the UK who had bought receivers from Baird International. At this time it was difficult to set vision and sound in phase, but this was achieved in 1930 when Gracie Fields*, the film actress and singer, took part in the first synchronized trans­mission.

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* Fields, Gracie (1898-1979) — English comedienne.

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              Meanwhile Baird had been experimenting with “big screen” TV and the first show was put on in the London Coliseum picture house, using a screen made up of 2,100 ordinary filament electric bulbs, fronted by a shut of ground glass. It was a great success. In 1932, Baird televised the Derby*.

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* Derby — a very important yearly horse race held at Epsom in England in May or June.

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             Baird was now at the height of his fame. He sailed aboard the Aquitania for New York to launch his TV system, with additional plans for Canada and Mexico. But his plan to set up his system in the USA came to nought. TV had started there in 1928 but by 1933 it had closed down due to the lim­its of its range, and its consequent inabili­ty to attract enough advertising.

                In Britain the BBC had a monopoly on broad­casting. In January 1934 the British Par­liament set up a Television Committee to look into the various systems that were available. The Committee proposed that the Baird and Marconi —EMI (the other broad­casting company which had developed a sys­tem that was said to be superior to Baird’s) systems should be tried by the BBC for two years, after which one should be adopted at the BBC’s for two years, after which one should be adopted at the BBC discretion. Over the period the public received both systems on the same receivers. In 1937, Baird was awarded the Gold Medal of the International Faculty of Science, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal society of Edinburgh, the BBC opted for Marconi system.

            It was bitter blow but Baird came bouncing back. A new company was formed. It was called “Cinema Television”. Big screens were erected in several cinemas, and the compa­ny had a monopoly on colour television (very difficult to achieve with the Marconi sys­tem). Also, home receivers made by the Baird Company were selling well. In Febru­ary 1938, he transmitted colour pictures from a small studio at Crystal Palace, Lon­don, to a large screen in the Dominion The­atre eight miles away. The pictures were viewed by an audience of 3,000 people.

             Then, in September 1939, war was declared on Germany, and television in Britain was closed down for the duration. It could have been the end of Baird’s dream.

            By the end of 1940, Baird had designed a high definition colour television receiver and the following year he produced stereo­scopic colour. His system of producing col­our was by means of rotating colour filters. He was determined to achieve a fully elec­tronic colour television receiver. And he did. On 16^th August 1944, he demonstrated the television picture of his favourite tailor’s dummy, dressed in a pink jacket and blue trousers, to a group of journalists in his workshop in London.

              Baird died in his sleep on the 14^th June 1946, before he could complete his work. There was not any place in Westminster Abbey for this genius, no lavish praise from the BBC, no honours from his country. He was buried in the little churchyard in Helens­burgh, the place of his birth.