Who invented television

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Q.� Blimey! Anything else

A.� Baird created a huge array of television technologies:��

• Phonovision, a forerunner of the video recorder
• A cinema-projection system
• Stereoscopic colour TV
• The first high definition colour TV
• Noctovision, an infra-red spotting system for 'seeing' in the dark

Television historians believe Baird used the soon-out-of-date mechanical scanning system to get a television system working as quickly as possible - in 1925. He changed to electronic scanning in the early 1930s and refined the system to a high degree.

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Q.� So how did it all start

A.� Baird was born in 1888 in Helensburgh, Scotland, son of a Presbyterian minister. He moved to the south coast of England and worked in business, although fascinated by the motors, mechanics and wireless. Then he read a magazine feature that mentioned the word television - coined by Constantin Perskyi at the International Electricity Congress in Paris in 1900. The word - meaning 'to see from a distance' - was the latest term for an concept that had been seriously discussed since the mid-19th century.

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Q.� That got him determined

A.� Yes. Baird became convinced that a machine could transmit images of events as they occurred across the world. Among his many studies, he was particularly intrigued by the work of German inventor Paul Nipkow. In 1994 Nipkow had patented the Elektrisches Teleskop - a primitive television device involving a spinning disc. Baird developed a few ideas in his spare time, despite having very little money. By July, 1923, filed a patent for his television design but it was not until 1924 that he had an actual working prototype.

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Q.� What was that called

A.� The Televisor. It was made in an old tea chest. Inside he put a motor and attached a home-made Nipkow disc - a cardboard circle cut from a hat box. Mounted on a darning needle spindle, with a biscuit box for the lamp housing, he glued it all together with sealing wax and string. And it worked. Using this bizarre contraption, he managed to transmit a silhouette of a Maltese cross three yards to a receiver. Two years later he unveiled the Televisor at Selfridge's department store in London - and aired the image of a doll on a screen measuring four by two inches.

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Q.� Who was the first human on the telly

A.� By October, 1925, Baird succeeded in transmitting full television in his small attic laboratory in Soho, London. The first TV star was a frightened office boy, William Taynton, who had to be bribed to stay in front of the hot lights. He gave a full demonstration to the Royal; Institution in January, 1926, and was granted a television broadcast licence by the General Post Office soon afterwards. A new era had been born.

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By Steve Cunningham

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