Baird, John Logie

SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology

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b. 13 August 1888 Helensburgh, Dumbarton, Scotland

d. 14 June 1946 Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England

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Scottish inventor of mechanically-based television.

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Baird attended Larchfield Academy, then the Royal Technical College and Glasgow University. However, before he could complete his electrical-engineering degree, the First World War began, although poor health kept him out of the armed services.

Employed as an engineer at the Clyde Valley Electrical Company, he lost his position when his diamond-making experiment caused a power failure in Glasgow. He then went to London, where he lived with his sister and tried manufacturing household products of his own design. To recover from poor health, he then went to Hastings and, using scrap materials, began experiments with imaging systems. In 1924 he transmitted outline images over wires, and by 1925 he was able to transmit recognizable human faces. In 1926 he was able to transmit moving images at a resolution of thirty lines per image and a frequency of ten images per second over an infrared link. Also that year, he started the world's first television station, which he named 2TV. In 1927 he transmitted moving images from London to Glasgow, and later that year to a passenger liner. In 1928 he demonstrated colour television.

In 1936, when the BBC wanted to begin television service, Baird's system lost out in a competition with Marconi Electric and Musical Industries (EMI). In 1946 Baird reported that he had successfully completed research on a stereo television system.

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Further Reading

R.Tiltman, 1933, Baird of Television, London: Seeley Service; repub. 1974, New York: Arno Press.

J.Rowland, 1967, The Television Man: The Story of John Logie Baird, New York: Roy Publishers.

F.Macgregor, 1984, Famous Scots, Gordon Wright (contains a short biography on Baird).

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