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When was the television invented? Who invented the TV?
I know it's an odd question but I was thinking about the television the other day. I haven't had T.V. in a couple of years now but I know that most of the United States does. It is a good way to get information out to the public so it was a wonderful invention! Anyway, out of pure curiosity, when was the television invented and who invented it in the first place?
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In 1939, the Andrea, the first TV, was invented.
Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, the father of this pervasive technology, first publicly demonstrated television on 26 January 1926, in his small laboratory in the Soho district of London. Although large companies with great financial support were also working on the problem of television, Baird managed to surpass them all with very little money, a handful of unpaid helpers and equipment pieced together using rather unconventional materials. For example, Baird's choice of mechanical scanning as the most effective way of achieving true television required the use of spinning discs -- which of financial necessity were made of hatboxes and mounted on a coffin lid.
The earliest suggestion of Baird's interest in television technology is an experiment which he conducted at his parents' house in 1903. This experiment involved the attempted construction of a selenium photo-electric cell, but was unsuccessful, and Baird burnt his hands in the process. Although John Logie Baird suggests that he first started work on a complete television system in Hastings, there is evidence that he actually began ten years earlier. In 1976, Peter Waddell wrote an article which quoted sources suggesting that Baird first experimented with a complete television system between 1912 and 1915, while living in Yoker and working towards his electrical engineering diploma at the Glasgow College. R.W. Burns reinforces this suggestion in his 1986 book British Television: The Formative Years. In 1996, Malcolm Baird said that his father's work in Yoker can now be considered a definite possibility.
The most fully substantiated evidence for Baird's early television work is found on the south coast of England, in Hastings in 1923. Even here, there is a certain amount of controversy, for Baird himself writes that he travelled directly from London to Hastings, where he then started work on television. This statement is untrue, for although Baird did travel to the south coast, it was not first to Hastings but to another seaside town called Folkestone. Since this new information has been released, a plaque has been placed on 26 Guildhall Street in Folkestone, in order to commemorate Baird's early television work there. According to R.W. Burns, Baird was definitely in Hastings during the winter of 1922 to 1923. This situation therefore suggests that Baird was simultaneously renting accommodation in Folkestone and Hastings.
In order to tackle the problem of television, John Logie Baird chose a system which employed mechanical scanning. There were various methods available to achieve this, and Baird selected a system which used the Nipkow disc as being the most promising. Invented by Paul Nipkow in 1884, this disc had a series of apertures cut into it, which could then be used to scan an image. This disc was combined with other discs, and produced a very different television set from the ones we use today, for Baird's system did not use the cathode ray tube which is the most common method of displaying an image on modern television equipment.
Baird was quite capable of inventing his machines, but he was not quite so capable of their construction. For this reason, he enlisted the help of two young Hastings boys, Victor Mills and Norman Loxdale. Mills assisted Baird in the refinement of his electronics and Loxdale made various components, including a Nipkow disc with two spirals of apertures which were covered with orange-red and blue-green filters. Loxdale later described his surprise at Baird's experimentation with this disc, as at that time the inventor had not yet achieved a television picture. This surprise can be more easily understood when one realises that this disc was capable of producing colour and/or three dimensional pictures.
There were two main problems which Baird would have to overcome in order to achieve television: the problem of the insensitivity of the photo-electric cell, and also the difficulty of obtaining a clear image. At first, he could only produce pictures of the outline of shapes, known as "shadowgraphs." C.F. Jenkins in America and D. von Mihaly in Hungary were also working on the problem of television, and had also produced shadowgraphs. However, Baird was able to solve his main difficulties and go beyond these two inventors in achieving true television.
To overcome his first problem, Baird worked with an assistant in Tunbridge Wells on the development of a photo-electric cell. The experimentation was successful, and he eventually produced a cell that "...was entirely different from existing cells on the market. The second problem was solved by Baird's refinement of his electronics. Douglas Brown suggests that Baird's system was as poor as everyone else's, but it was his use of a technique called "sharpening" that finally produced a television picture. Sharpening is an electronic method which brings a picture into focus in the same manner in which a normal lens focuses an image.
Almost eleven years to the day after graduating with an electrical engineering diploma from the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, John Logie Baird first achieved a recognisable television image. In his autobiography, Baird describes this historic occasion.
The image of the dummy's head formed itself on the screen with what appeared to be almost unbelievable clarity...I ran down the little flight of stairs to Mr. Cross' office, and seized by the arm his office boy William Taynton, hauled him upstairs and put him in front of the transmitter
After paying Taynton two shillings and sixpence to stay in position, Baird finally saw a human face recognisably reproduced on his apparatus. Baird waited four months, until 26 January 1926, before demonstrating his achievement to the Royal Institute and a reporter from The Times newspaper.
John Logie Baird's achievement of television brought him great recognition. He went on to become a well known public figure in Great Britain. In 1931 married the concert pianist Margaret Albu. The couple had two children, Diana and Malcolm. Diana is a retired schoolteacher living near Glasgow, and Malcolm is a professor in chemical engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, as well as a Baird historian in his own right.
Baird's work did not stop with his achievement of true television. He went on to develop television for cinemas, both colour and three dimensional television, and also investigated further into secret signalling and radar technology. The fall edition of Kinema will contain a complementary article by Malcolm Baird, examining his father's work following the first demonstration of television.
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