John Logie Baird

John Logie Baird was a Scottish engineer who is considered one of the main pioneers of television technology. He is the inventor of the first television set, on which he demonstrated the transmission of a static image at a distance in 1925. A year later, he made the first transmission of moving television images. In 1928 he made the first demonstration of a color image and made a long-distance transmission from London to New York. Baird's work played a key role in the development of television technology and laid the groundwork for further innovation in electronic television. In 2002, he was ranked 44th on the list of the 100 greatest Britons. In 2006, he was named one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history when he was inducted into the Scottish Science Hall of Fame by the National Library of Scotland. He was born into the family of a Protestant preacher in Helensburgh, the youngest of four children. From childhood, he was fond of technical inventions and assembled various devices himself. At the age of 12, he built his own telephone. He studied engineering at the University of Glasgow and joined a power station as an engineer. At the beginning of 1915 he enlisted in the army, but due to poor health he was not drafted. He unsuccessfully tried to do business in various fields with products that he designed and manufactured himself shoe cleaner, thermal insoles, preserves, soap. In 1923 he moved to Hastings on the south coast of England. He set up his own workshop there and tried out various inventions. His neighbors considered him an oddity, and the sound and light effects accompanying his experiments made them afraid. Baird focused his efforts on developing a device that would allow the transmission of images at a distance. Using a variety of discarded objects (a tea box, a biscuit tin, needles, tinfoil, motors), he built a primitive device that could transfer the vague image of the Maltese cross from one end of the room to the other. He moved to London, where he continued his attempts to develop a working television system using the Nipkow reel. In the spring of 1925, he managed to transmit the first television image, first the head of a ventriloquist puppet, then the face of a living person, the messenger William Taynton. Baird's television had 30 wide lines and was black and white, the picture was gray and of poor quality. He demonstrated his invention to the public at Selfridges department store in London. On 26 January 1926, Baird made his first public public display of real television images for members of the Royal Society and a reporter from The Times in his laboratory. In 1927 he transmitted the first long-distance television images between London and Glasgow over a telegraph wire. In July 1928, he demonstrated the first color transmission and stereoscopic television. He founded a joint-stock company, which in 1928 made the first transatlantic television broadcast from London to the small village of Hardstale in the USA. In 1929, he received permission from the Post Office to broadcast half an hour a day, five days a week, via the BBC, which signed a contract with him for a trial use of his equipment for five years. In the studio in Long Acre, he prepared feature productions, screened films and made the first live broadcast of horse races 1931. He constantly improved his apparatus and filming methods, introduced the broadcasting of current news, and carried out broadcasts from an airplane. In November 1936, the BBC began regular broadcasting, alternating programmes carried by Baird's and Marconi's rival electronic systems. A year later, Baird's electromechanical system was definitively replaced by a purely electronic one that provided a higher quality image. During the war, television broadcasting in England was interrupted from 1939 to 1946.