John Logie Baird 1888 - 1946

Born in Helensburgh, Dumbartonshire, John Baird was an engineer who pioneered the development of television. Plagued with ill health (he’d been rejected as unfit for military service for WW1) he was forced to resign from his position as an electrical engineer, and retired early in 1922 to Hastings on the English South coast, there he used his time to research ways of transmitting pictures.


Although other scientists around the world were also conducting experiments at the same time, Baird was the first to hold a successful public demonstration, this was on January 27, 1926 in London using his primitive television system. Later that year he also became the first to transmit pictures of moving objects at the Royal Institution in London in front of fifty scientists.


Continuing his research he transmitted pictures between London and Glasgow using telephone lines in 1927, and between London and New York in 1928 using radio waves. He also helped to pioneer colour television and stereoscopic television - a system giving greater depth to the picture. Baird’s company, Baird Television Development Company, provided the first programme for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on September 30, 1929.


The first television systems transmitted pictures made up of only 30 lines. However, Baird was instrumental in using more lines and therefore developed a more complex system that gave the picture greater definition. Eventually, his mechanical system having 240-lines was superseded by the electronic system invented by EMI in conjunction with Marconi. Today television pictures consist of between 525 and 819 lines. John Logie Baird died in Sussex, England on the 14th June 1946.