Born in Helensburgh on
31 August 1888, the youngest child of the Rev. John Baird. From a very
early age he liked tinkering with devices and making communication
technology. He took a course in electrical engineering at the Royal
technical College in Glasgow (later Strathclyde University), then went on
to Glasgow University. His final year in a BSc course there was curtailed
by World War I.
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Unfit for the forces,
he served as a superintendent engineer, but by the end of the war had to
give up due to ill health. He invented a medicated sock, (which presumably
sold well to mothers of adolescent boys), before emigrating to the West
Indies. An attempt to sell jam there was interrupted by ill health, a
handicap which he had to struggle against all his life. He retired to
Hastings in Sussex, in 1922, and began working on the invention of
television, something which many had thought of for 50 years.
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His success was
straight out of a Boy's Own comic. In an attic, virtually penniless, he
constructed the world's first television contraption. Sitting on a
washstand the base of his motor was a tea-chest, the projection lamp sat
in a biscuit tin, scanning disks were cut from cardboard, and lenses were
bicycle accessories, at four pence each. The whole thing was held together
by scrap wood, darning needles, string, and of course sealing-wax. And it
worked.
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In 1924 he succeeded
in transmitting the image of a Maltese Cross over a few feet. He moved to
London, occupying two attic rooms at 22 Frith Street, Soho. There, on 26
January 1926, Baird demonstrated television before 50 scientists. His
equipment is now preserved in the Science Museum, London.
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In 1927 he transmitted
a signal over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow. He
set up the Baird Television Development Company Ltd, which in 1928 made a
transmission from London to New York. That same year his tireless energy
also demonstrated colour, and stereoscopic television.
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Baird's system, which
was mechanical, was the only operable method for television at this time,
and programme transmission using his methods were taken over by the BBC in
1932. Electronic were also being developed, chiefly by Marconi in the USA,
and these were eventually to supersede Baird's technology in 1937.
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His other developments
were in fibre-optics, radio direction finding, large screen television and
other areas. There remains still the nagging doubt that his contribution
to the development of radar has never been officially acknowledged.
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He married Margaret Albu, a concert
pianist, in 1931; they had two children. Baird continued his experimental
work until his death at Bexhill, Sussex, on 14 June 1946.
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