John Logie Baird's grandson on 100 years since landmark first demonstration of television
Breakthrough moment showcased Scot’s ingenuity to the world
It was a moment when years of hard graft and perseverance paid off for one of Scotland’s most famous sons, and the world’s eyes were opened to an entirely new form of communication.
Now, as plans to commemorate the centenary of the first public demonstration of television gather pace, the grandson of John Logie Baird has told The Scotsman of the “long hours” and meticulous fine tuning that went into one of the 20th century’s greatest technological breakthroughs.
On 26 January, it will be 100 years to the day since Baird gathered members of the Royal Institution to his small laboratory in London, where he showcased his pioneering ‘Televisor’ apparatus.
Some of those present took turns to sit in front of a whirring disc containing lenses, behind which was a revolving shutter and a light sensitive cell. Baird also used the head of a ventriloquist’s doll, which he named Stookie Bill, manipulating its movements in front of the lenses.
The rest of the intrigued audience, in groups of five or six at a time, sat in an a small) adjoining room, watching on via a receiver set, inside of which was an aluminium scanning disc with a neon lamp behind it, flickering according to the electric signal transmitted from the apparatus in the large room.
Although the relayed images were faint and at times blurred on the receiving apparatus, the electromechanical system fulfilled Baird’s promise of producing true television images.
“I don’t transmit photographs or want to,” he explained at the time. “That has been done long ago. I transmit whatever comes before the transmitting end of my apparatus its movement, and form, with full detail.”
The demonstration helped prove that a marketable and commercial television system was possible, and news of Baird’s invention quickly spread. The following day’s edition of The Scotsman, for example, explained to readers exactly how the new device worked.
“The televisor can be attached to any wireless receiving set which employs valves, and produces in its present form, a small picture, on a ground glass screen, of whatever is happening at the transmitting end,” it explained.
Looking back at his grandfather’s achievement, Iain Logie Baird said the successful showcase at the cramped attic workshop in Soho’s Frith Street was the culmination of dogged research that saw him commence serious experimental work into television in early 1923.
The endeavour was beset by a lack of funds, but 10 months before producing what would be recognised as television images, Baird, from Helensburgh, successfully showed his “rickety apparatus” before audiences at London’s Selfridge’s store, exhibiting images using reflected light and a basic face mask, which appeared to wink at customers. The subsequent publicity, and money, helped Baird to produce the first recognisable moving greyscale images a few months later.
“The televisor had worked since 2 October 1925, and the intervening months were spent improving the apparatus and the pictures to be suitable for the debut of the first television system that actually worked,” explained Iain. “Numerous earlier television ideas were demonstrated by others, but were either lacking gradations of light and shade, were not moving images, or were not instantaneous.”
The use of the ventriloquist’s doll, he added, was not just an eye-catching way of illustrating his invention, but it allowed Baird to work towards showing recognisable moving pictures of a face, something he deemed to be fundamental.
“Stookie Bill was given to my grandfather by a part-time ventriloquist some time in the summer or early autumn of 1925,” recalled Iain, who inherited his grandfather’s fascination for television, having worked as curator of television at the National Media Museum in Bradford, as well as assistant curator at the CBC Museum and curator of collections at the MZTV Museum, both in Canada. ”The lighting was very intense and hot, and a test pattern as we would call it today was needed as my grandfather worked long hours trying to find the right methodologies to achieve true television.”
After the January 1926 exhibition, during which the delegation of around 40 or so members of the Royal Institution, together with a few of their wives and companions, queued on the stairwell to Baird’s workshop to see his invention for themselves, things began to move “at an increasing pace,” according to Iain.
Much of the rest of 1926 was spent improving television further as well as inventing Noctovision, the first infrared television system. By May 1927, Baird transmitted a long-distance television signal between Glasgow and London. The following February, he achieved pioneering transatlantic transmissions of television from London to New York, before hitting on the first colour transmission that July.
“The public demonstration's most important effect was to reach a global audience via press coverage, and light a fire under other television experimenters and companies to accelerate or begin their own efforts,” Iain explained. “This included lone inventors like Philo Farnsworth and big radio conglomerates like RCA.”
It also helped counter the “scepticism” Iain said his grandfather had come up against, particularly amongst some in the BBC. “Early TV with its 30 lines was sometimes considered as an annoyance and treated as such,” he said. “There were a few champions in the BBC however, such as AGD West and HL Kirke, people who helped my grandfather in the early days.”
Nearly one hundred years on from Baird’s fateful demonstration, there are plans to mark the anniversary with a special screening of the documentary film, ‘The Man who saw the Future’, in the Helensburgh & Lomond civic centre. The film, originally aired by the BBC in 2002, was presented by Baird’s son, and Iain’s father, Malcolm.
As far as Iain is concerned, the centenary is an opportunity to remind new generations of his grandfather’s life and work, as well as Britain's role as a “world leader” in television. “The most important thing is to recognise how these centenaries mark all the wonderful things done with television since, as a technology, as a medium, and as an artform,” he said.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.