John Logie Baird

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Baird bust in Helensburgh, Scotland

John Logie Baird (born August 13, 1888 in Helensburgh , Scotland , † June 14, 1946 in Bexhill-on-Sea , East Sussex , England ) was a Scottish inventor and television pioneer.

Live and act

Educated at Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (now Strathclyde University ) and the University of Glasgow , Baird worked as a clerk at a power company ( Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company ) during World War I before setting up on his own to experiment with the technical development of the To be able to devote more time to television based on the Nipkow disc . In the spring of 1925 he was able to use his apparatus for a few weeks in Selfridges department store in London, where Baird von Hastings wenthad since moved to perform publicly. In the autumn he managed to improve the apparatus to such an extent that it enabled a contoured reproduction. After a successful demonstration of this mechanical television to members of the Royal Institution on January 26, 1926, enough capital was raised to found the Baird Television Development Company . On February 8, 1928, Baird managed the transatlantic transmission of a television picture from London to New York. The image was initially transmitted over telephone lines to a shortwave transmitter in Coulsdon , from where it was broadcast across the Atlantic. In the same year, another milestone in the history of television followed with the first color television set (with synchronously rotating color filters in front of the camera and receiver ) . The BBC broadcast from 1930 to 1935 in the method introduced by Baird with 30 lines and 12.5 frames / s, after trial programs had already been broadcast in 1929; the latter - in cooperation with the Berliner Fernseh-AG  - also in Germany. From 1931, mechanical television had to assert itself against fully electronic televisions with cathode ray tubes . The first devices were presented in Germany by Manfred von Ardenne , in the USA by Farnsworth and the RCA and in Great Britain by the Marconi Company . The first electronic televisions mostly had a dark picture with little contrast, so that mechanical television was quite a serious competitor in the early days. But also Baird switched to fully electronic television (at least on the receiver side) when switching to higher numbers of lines. In 1934 Baird presented an electronic television with a resolution of 240 lines (progressive), the electronic camera tubes (image dissector) were bought by Farnsworth and mechanical film scanners were used. In particular, the Farnsworth camera, with its weak light, was inferior to Marconi's "Ikonoskop" system with 405 lines (interlaced), so that after a short parallel operation the BBC decided to concentrate on the Marconi EMI process and broadcasts according to the system by Baird. Only the mechanical film scanner, converted to 405 lines, was still in use until the outbreak of war. The last broadcast in the Baird system was on January 30, 1937.

Nevertheless, until 1939 (the television service of the BBC was temporarily discontinued at the beginning of the war and only resumed in July 1946), Baird still built mechanical and fully electronic television receivers that could also receive television images according to the new 405-line standard using a mirror wheel. The images were larger and brighter than those on the first picture tube TVs . In addition, Baird built TV broadcast vans and RF links to self-developed television projectors in cinemas with up to 3000 seats, the economic use of which was thwarted by the beginning of the Second World War (Cinema Television). However, Baird had to realize that the future belonged to fully electronic television. In the years 1940 to 1944, he developed various color televisions, initially with rotating color wheels in front of the camera or picture tube, and later with a color picture tube. In contrast to modern color picture tubes, only two electron beams were used; the picture tubes were spherical with the picture surface in the middle. This was coated on one side with a red phosphor and on the other side with a green-blue phosphor. The electron beams were emitted from the front and back of the screen. In this way, Baird avoided interference from the other side, and a shadow mask as in today's color picture tubes was not required. According to eyewitnesses, the picture is said to have been very colorfast and bright. The number of lines was increased to over 1000 experimentally. Also during the war, Baird experimented with color 3D television. The image frequency was simply increased (and the number of lines decreased for bandwidth reasons) so that two images were transmitted one after the other for each eye. Through a lens system, only one viewer could view the three-dimensional image at a time, which nowadays can be overcome for each viewer with the help of 3D shutter glasses.

In 1937 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Evaluation / afterlife

In addition to his undoubtedly considerable inventions ( see also: Narrow Bandwidth Television ), Baird's greatest merit is above all that he demonstrated the possibilities of television to the public , made it so popular and thus also greatly accelerated technical development overall.

Australia's major television awards - the Logie Awards  - are named after John Logie Baird. In the BBC's survey of the 100 most important Britons in 2002, Baird was ranked 44th. On January 26, 2017, Baird was honored with a Milestone plaque , a commemorative plaque awarded by the IEEE as part of its Milestone Program. The plaque is on the building at 22 Frith Street where Baird demonstrated his invention to members of the Royal Institution on January 26, 1926.

literature

  • John Logie Baird: Television and Me. The Memoirs of John Logie Baird. Mercat Press, Edinburgh 2004, ISBN 1-84183-063-1 .
  • Walter Haas: Color television. A gift of our century. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf, Vienna 1967, pp. 124–129 u.ö.

Web links

Commons : John Logie Baird  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The "Televisor". Successful Test of New Apparatus (The Times article of January 28, 1926 about the demonstration two days earlier in Soho at www.bairdtelevision.com; with photos)
  2. ↑ See the Baird story under web links
  3. ↑ shaper RSE Fellows 1783-2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 7, 2019 .
  4. ↑ IEEE Milestone Celebration - The Evolution of Television from Baird to the Digital Age (article about the presentation of the Milestones Award and John Logie Baird)
personal data
SURNAME Baird, John Logie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish television technician
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Helensburgh
DATE OF DEATH June 14, 1946
Place of death Bexhill-on-Sea