John Logie Baird 1888 -1946

John Logie Baird inventor of amongst other things, the television - known by some as "The One-eyed God in the corner of the room". He was born in Helensburgh in Scotland on 14th August 1888 to parents Jessie and the Reverend John Baird, I seem to remember seeing evidence suggesting that Jessie's maiden name was Logie and I hope to find that evidence again one day.
As a young boy he apparently took to tinkering with the sort of things normally beyond a young boy, for instance he built and set up a telephone exchange at his parents home the "The Lodge" which he conected to the houses of four friends, it worked but had to be dismantled when a hanson cab was caught up in the overhead cables. Undaunted he used a petrol generator in the back garden and the cables to wire up his parents house with electric lighting, the first in Helensburg.

1925 he sent and received the first wireless television signal using a 30 line resolution transmitter the Televisor using a modified Niplow disc which was capable of producing colour and 3 dimensional pictures.

1926 he gave a live demonstration to the British public.

1928 Feb 29 the first transmission across the Atlantic to New York.

Pictured above John Logie Baird and his Televisor (Mechanical Television)

1928 in July he demonstrated colour television.

1929 to 1931 he started the first TV station and provided broadcasts for the BBC including the first outside broadcast of the Derby.

1931 he married Margaret Albu

1933 the BBC were using his technology but by 1937 replacing it with more advanced CRT technology from another source.

During WW2 he worked on Radar, high speed coded signalling, and a product now at the forefront of todays communications systems of cable telephone and television, Fibre optics on which he took out a patent.

Todays VCR technology is based on his mechanical method of producing pictures.

Todays Virtual Reality systems can be traced back to John Logie Baird's work as in his Stereoscopic Television which the apparatus covered the user's face and provided televison to each eye.

Before he died in 1946 he was working on producing television using 1000 lines resolution - in 1990 the Japanese produced a television using 1125 lines - it took a long time to catch up, if we have yet, as most modern TVs in the home use 625 lines still.

Some have argued that John Logie Baird did not invent television because his original mechanical Televisor did not use the CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) and therefore was not TV as we know it today - in the next ten years televisions will be using advanced T.F.T screens as the norm, so will the same people argue that the CRT is not TV as we will know it in 2011.

JOHN LOGIE BAIRD INVENTED TELEVISION.......Q.E.D.

He died as he appears to have lived and done his research, with little or no funds............now where have I heard that before....... .

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