John Logie Baird and the Television.
On August 14 1888 Scottish scientist and engineer John Logie Baird was born. He is considered the inventor of the world's first television the first publicly demonstrated colour television system, and the first purely electronic colour television picture tube. Born in Helensburgh Argyll and Bute (then Dunbartonshire on the west coast of Scotland Baird was the youngest of four children of the Reverend John Baird, the Church of Scotland's minister for the local St Bride's church. 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 . He was educated at Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (which later became the University of Strathclyde. In 1906 he went to study Electrical Engineering at Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. His degree course was interrupted by World War I and he never returned to graduate. Rejected as unfit for the forces because of his ill health condition, he served as superintendent engineer of the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company. When the war ended he set himself up in business, as e.g., including the 'Baird Undersock' and jam-making in Trinidad , but only with mixed results. The development of television was the result of work by many inventors Among them, Baird was a prominent pioneer and made major advances in the field. Baird moved to Hastings on the south coast of England to follow his dream and built what was to become the world's first working television set using items including an old hatbox and a pair of scissors some darning needles, a few bicycle light lenses a used tea chest and sealing wax and glue that he purchased. In February 1924 he demonstrated to the Radio Times that a semi-mechanical analogue television system was possible by transmitting moving silhouette images. In July of the same year, he received a 1000-volt electric shock, but survived with only a burnt hand. By 1925 he moved to London and was ready to give the first public display of a working television at Selfridges in Oxford Street, London Shoppers saw slightly blurred but recognizable images of letters. At the heart of Baird's system was a rotating disc containing spirals of holes (or lenses through which a beam of light passed to scan the object. The poor quality of photocells limited Baird's early equipment to sending shadows and outlines. He was able to apply for a patent on July 26 1923 but although the BBC expressed interest, they would not participate in his work. . On January 26th 1926 a viable television system was demonstrated using mechanical picture scanning with electronic amplification at the transmitter and at the receiver It could be sent by radio or over ordinary telephone lines leading to the historic trans-Atlantic transmissions of television from London to New York in February, 1928. There were notable firsts, including a performance of Pirandello's. The Man with a Flower in. His Mouth - the first play to be performed on television in Britain on 14 July 1930. The first outside broadcast followed; the Derby was televised live in June 1931 and again the following year. Finally the BBC began to take television seriously, and on 22 August 1932 the BBC began a regular television service from basement studio BB in the new Broadcasting House using Baird's system, albeit still experimental and still low-definition 30-line. . 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 1939 he showed colour television using a cathode ray tube in front of which revolved a disc fitted with colour filters, a method taken up by CBS and RCA in the United States. In 1941 he patented and demonstrated a system of three-dimensional television at a definition of 500 lines. On 16 August 1944 he gave the world's first demonstration of a fully electronic colour television display Baird died at home in Bexhill-on-Sea on 14 June 1946. At yovisto you can watch an RCA documentary on the history of television with the Scotsman John Logie Baird giving the world`s first public demonstration of live, moving images in 1925.