Baird, John Logie

Baird, John Logie (1888-1946), Scottish engineer, pioneer in the development of television. Born in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, on August 13, 1888, Baird was forced to resign from his position as an electrical engineer through persistent ill health, and he retired early, in 1922, to Hastings, East Sussex. Under these circumstances, he used his time to research ways of transmitting pictures.

Although various scientists in different parts of the world, for example, in Germany and the United States, were also conducting experiments around the same time, Baird was the first to hold a successful public demonstration, on January 27, 1926, of his primitive television system, in Soho, London. Later that year he also became the first to transmit pictures of objects in motion, at the Royal Institution in London, and to show his “noctovision”, a system that used infrared rays to communicate pictures from a darkened room. From then on Baird continued his research: he transmitted pictures between London and Glasgow using telephone lines in 1927 and between London and New York the following year using radio waves; he also helped to pioneer colour television and stereoscopic television, which gave greater depth and solidity to the picture. His company, Baird Television Development Company, provided the first programme for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on September 30, 1929.

The early television systems transmitted pictures made up of 30 lines; Baird was instrumental in developing a more complex system that used more lines and gave the picture greater definition. Eventually, however, his 240-line mechanical system was supplanted by the 405-line electronic system invented by EMI in conjunction with Marconi (nowadays, television pictures consist of between 525 and 819 lines).