John Logie Baird Biography

Born on 13^th August 1888 in Helensburgh, Scotland - John Logie Baird invented his first working television system along with the world's first colour television. He demonstrated this system on the 26^th of January 1926. He was a well-known personality and had achieved success in his field of experiments. It was in 1928 that he achieved the first transatlantic television transmission for his television development company. He contributed to the introduction of television for which he earned a significant position.

Until recently, he was named in the list of top 10 Scottish Scientists in the National Library of Scotland. Baird was also inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2015. A bronze plaque was also dedicated to him for his extraordinary work in London. In this John Logie Baird biography, we will learn about his life and how he managed to invent the first-ever television set.

Early Years of John Logie Baird and His Family

The John Logie Baird date of birth is 13^th August 1888 and he was born in Helensburgh, Scotland to Reverend John Baird – who in turn was the Minister of the Church of Scotland and his mother – Jessie Morrison Inglis, who belonged to a wealthy family in Glasgow. The John Logie Baird family consisted mainly of his parents and his three other siblings. John Logie Baird education was from Larchfield Academy that is now a part of Lomond School. The school is situated in Helensburgh. He further went on to study at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College and the University of Glasgow. He couldn’t graduate from his degree course because of the First World War.

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When Baird was in college, he was interested in the field of science and took a couple of jobs as part of his course – mainly as an engineering apprentice. His socialist convictions can be reflected in the conditions that prevailed in the Industrial Glasgow that ultimately resulted in his deteriorating health. In the initial years of the 1900s, he served the British army but later he was deemed unfit – because of which he joined an electrical power company.

Facts about John Logie Baird and His Experiments in Television

The John Logie Baird TV system was first demonstrated in London by Archibald Low in May 1914. These demonstrations were highly famous worldwide and were also reported to the US diplomat. After the end of the first world war, many inventors engaged in this field of study. It was in June 1924 that John Baird bought a cell from Cyrill Frank Elwell that was known as the Thalofide Cell or the Thallium Sulphide. This cell was developed by Theodore Case. This cell contributed to bringing about a new technology of talking pictures. He implemented this technology and produced the first-ever television grayscale image from reflected light. He improved the cell by cooling the temperature optimisation of the cell and customising the video amplifier.

Facts about John Logie Baird before he developed the first working television system is that he experimented with the Nipkow Disk that was invented as a scanning disk by Paul Nipkow in 1884. Nipkow's contribution was considered important as several other inventors began to develop it as a broadcast medium. Gradually towards the early 1920s, his health started deteriorating but he still managed to build the first-ever working television using some of the minimal materials available to him. His first public demonstration was in London at a small departmental store where he displayed the moving silhouette images on a television. In 1925, John Logie Baird was able to successfully transmit the first greyscale picture on television. The image was of a dummy named Stooky Bill and the image was scanned vertically in a 32-line taking about a second per picture. 

The first person to be televised on a full tonal range was William Edward Taynton who was his office worker. Since he wanted to publicise his work, he went to a news agency. But to his utter surprise, he was turned down by the editor of the newspaper by calling him a lunatic. Finally, on the 26^th of January 1926, John Logie Baird was able to demonstrate a live display of moving pictures in his television system. He also went on to invent the world's first colour television system in 1928. The first woman to get featured in this demonstration was Neole Gordon - an eight-year-old then.

Television and Broadcasting

Some of the interesting facts about John Logie Braid was - in the year 1927 when a long television signal line of over 700 km was transmitted over a telephone line to Central Hotel in Glasgow. His first-ever transatlantic transmission was from London to New York in 1928. Many programmes were broadcasted on BBC. The first TV series that was aired on television in the UK was The Man with the Flower in His Mouth in 1930. From the 1930s onwards the BBC transmitters used the 30-line Baird System to broadcast television programmes. Later the Baird company started producing a number of television programmes that were independent of the BBC. 

In 1936, the BBC altered the 240-line transmitting system to a 405-line that eventually developed to process whereby the footage was shot on a cine film which was later developed and scanned. Gradually it was felt that the braid's system couldn’t cope up with the changing scenario and it came to be replaced soon by a fully electronic television system that was developed by Sir Issac Shoenberg. 

John Logie Baird contributed immensely to the field of television. He used a system that is known in the present day as a cathode ray tube to invent a colour television set. His methods were later taken by CBS and RCA in the USA. By the 1940s Baird had developed a fully electronic system called the telechrome. Later he used the same method to produce a 3 D image. It was in 1944 that the world got its first fully functioning electronic and coloured display television set. After the end of the second world war, television broadcasts were resumed again and a 1000-line telechrome electronic colour system was proposed. We can even compare the picture resolution to today's HDTV.

Some of His Other Inventions and How John Logie I Baird Died

There are countless number John Logie Baird inventions that didn’t get much attention. Apart from the successful John Logie Baird inventions of the television system, he also invented a glass razor, a thermal undersock, an early video recording device, fibre-optics, infrared night viewing and radar.

He started living in East -Sussex from 1944 onwards and subsequently died at the same place on 14^th June 1946. He died after suffering from a stroke. The house in which he used to live was demolished and, in its place, an apartment was erected in 2007. He was buried alongside his parents grave in Helensburgh Cemetery in Scotland.

Some of His Honours and Portrayals

Logie Awards of Australian television were named after John Logie Baird who had contributed immensely to the invention of television. He was also honoured in BBC television theatre that was held in 1957 by Eamonn Andrews. Baird was played by many actors including Michael Gwynn in the film A Voice in Vision in the year 1957 and Robert McIntosh for the TV drama The stools on the Hill in 1986.

In recent years, John Logie Baird was also inducted into the Honor Roll of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers for his honorary contribution as an individual but not awarded in their lifetime. It was in 2016 that Google released the 90th anniversary of Baird's first attempt to release the television demonstration.

This John Logie Baird biography suggests the readers an insight into how he managed to invent a television system given all the odds. He was constantly mocked for his efforts but that didn’t stop him. Despite his multiple failures, he was able to fulfil his dreams and is remembered and honoured to date. He has been a member of different societies naming Physical Society of 1927, Television Society of 1927 and was also an honorary member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1937. 

Before he died in 1946, he made some remarkable contributions to society by developing a coloured television set. His television system was later criticised and replaced with Macroni Electric and Musical Industries who eventually got the hold to produce a much better quality 405-line picture than a 240-line picture of Baird's television system. His first live broadcast was The Derby in 1932, following a number of other television theatres in London Coliseum, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm. The live image that was used of Paddy Naismith was first used in his colour television system.