Today marks an auspicious anniversary which might have passed us by had it not been for [Diamond Geezer], who reminds us that it’s a hundred years since the first public demonstration of television by John Logie Baird. In a room above what is today a rather famous Italian coffee shop in London’s Soho, he had assembled a complete mechanical TV system that he demonstrated to journalists.
Television is one of those inventions that owes its genesis to more than a single person, so while Baird was by no means the only one inventing in the field, he was the first to demonstrate a working system. With mechanical scanning and just 30 lines, it’s hardly HD or 4K, but it does have the advantage of being within the reach of the constructor.
Perhaps the saddest thing about Baird and his system is that while he was able to attract the interest of the BBC in it, when the time came for dedicated transmissions at a higher resolution, his by then partly mechanical system could not compete and he faded into relative obscurity. Brits instead received EMI’s 405 line system, which persisted until the very start of the 1980s, and eventually the German PAL colour system in the late 1960s.
So head on down to Bar Italia if you can to raise a coffee to his memory, and should you wish to have a go at Baird-style TV for yourself, then you may need to print yourself a disk.
Header image: Matt Brown, CC BY 2.0.
I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that we had television in homes in the late 1940s. I always thought 10 years later but Ricky Ricardo being from Cuba… puzzle. Black & White TV is the best!
Late 1930s in the UK if you were lucky enough to live near Alexandra Palace in London and had the cash. The transmitter was shut down at the outbreak of war but was later used to spoof one of the Luftwaffe radio navigation aids, Y-Gerat as far as I can remember. Services resumed after the war but it was Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation that drove interest.
There were experimental, but regular, television broadcasts in New York before WWII.
In an episode of “Star Trek Strange New Worlds”, a young Mr Scott and crew beam aboard a damaged ship. Scotty says, “What in Baird’s name…”. Another crew member says, “Who?”. Scotty replies, “Everyone knows John Logie Baird”. I have to confess, I had to look him up.
Doctor Who also went into Logie Baird territory too. He is well known in the UK
Here in Australia we remember him every year as our television show awards are known as the Logie Awards.
a device that rotted my brain enough to prepare me for the internet. isnt technology…
questionable?
Never had one in halt a century.
A freeloader, huh?
What are they messing about at having a static plaque on the wall – it should be JLB mechanism displaying a moving image!
I only know because of QI https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380136/ . My personal belief is that QI should be required watching for HAD regulars, just like XKCD. They actually mentioned Randall on an episode which resulted in much cheering from the peanut gallery (== me). [NB: they’re not always right, and I’m still peeved about their misunderstanding of kibibytes vs kilobytes and when to use each, but it’s entertaining.]
bandersentv on youtube is restoring an RCA RR-359B tv from 1936. Amazingly similar to any “modern” tv from the crt era
One step in a long staircase.