John Logie Baird and Television (Part 1)

Abstract

EYE OF THE WORLD: JOHN LOGIE BAIRD AND TELEVISION (Part1) 1996 is the seventieth anniversary of the birth of television. John Logie Baird, the father of this pervasive technology, first publicly demonstrated television on 26 January 1926, in his small laboratory in the Soho district of London. Although large companies with great financial support were also working on the problem of television, Baird managed to surpass them all with very little money, a handful of unpaid helpers and equipment pieced together using rather unconventional materials. For example, Baird's choice of mechanical scanning as the most effective way of achieving true television required the use of spinning discs -- which of financial necessity were made of hatboxes and mounted on a coffin lid. This short account, written for the anniversary of the invention of television, not only recounts the events that led up to the first demonstration of television by...