JOHN LOGIE BAIRD: BIOGRAPHY AND INVENTIONS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

John Logie Baird (1888-1946) was a Scottish physicist and engineer who created the first public television system, as well as color television. The first three decades of the 20th century were the scene of the work of Baird, who visited different nations in wartime seeking to create a public television system.

Coming from a family with a certain social position and economic comfort, he always showed a privileged mind, as well as a special understanding and talent for technology. It is said that in his house he installed a kind of telephone exchange that allowed him to communicate with his friends on the same street.

Logie did not have the confidence of any investor who could finance his various imaging projects. However, this did not cause her to put her research aside; on the contrary, it made her rethink the problem.

John Logie Baird's career and the possibility of seeing other inventions arrive was abruptly and fatally cut short by medical complications. However, this remarkable inventor left an indelible mark on humanity: until the advent of the internet, his invention was the most popular telecommunication system in existence.

Biography

Family

John Logie Baird was born on August 14, 1888 in the town of Helensburgh, Council of Argyll and Bute; he was the youngest in a family of four children.

His father was the Reverend John Baird, who was a minister in the local church of St. Bridge. This church was part of the Church of Scotland, which was Protestant, Presbyterian and the official one in that country.

His mother was Jessie Morrison Inglis and she was related to a family of Glasgow shipbuilders. It was thanks to her that, in the end, John Logie Baird obtained the resources that gave the impulse and the economic arm necessary for him to finance the operation of his laboratory.

Training

Thanks to his social and economic position, but mainly because of his resourcefulness and constant curiosity, Baird made his way into the Larchfield Academy. He continued his training at the Glasgow Technical School to finally enter the University of Glasgow; it was received with honors in each of its academic stages.

While it is true that he came from a wealthy family, he did not always hold a comfortable position: during the First World War he tried to serve his country, but was rejected due to the fragility of his health.

He worked as an electrician, as a superintendent at the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company and even had to sell grease or shoe polish and razor blades.

Most relevant invention

Starting in 1922 Baird began to investigate how feasible it was to transmit images from a certain distance. In 1924 he obtained the first positive result when he was able to transmit the image of a Maltese cross that, although with a constant blinking, was clearly visible.

Since then Baird continued to improve his creation, until he built several television stations in the most important cities in the world at that time, such as Paris, Moscow, Berlin, Rome and London, among others.

Death

John Logie Baird died in England in East Sussex County (in the town of Bexhill-on-Sea) on June 14, 1946.

The cause of death was a sudden stroke that occurred at the age of 58. Her remains rest in Helensburgh Cemetery along with those of her father, mother and spouse.

Inventions

Waterproof socks

According to various sources, during the First World War, English soldiers suffered from a terrible disease that they called “trench foot”. This was nothing more than the result of keeping the men's lower limbs submerged in water or mud for weeks during the winter.

Said abuse and prolonged exposure to humidity and cold made the skin inside the field boots become soft, being able to lacerate very easily, causing wounds and giving entry to dangerous infections that ultimately resulted in gangrene and amputation of the affected limb.

In 1917 John Logie Baird developed a pair of chemically waterproof socks and sold his invention to the British Army. The money he made from this business was invested entirely in his most important goal: remote image transmission.

Television

Without a doubt, the most important invention attributed to this character is television. The word comes from the Greek tele, which means "distance"; and from the Latin visio, which means "vision" or "sight."

Baird embarked on the task of demonstrating that it was possible to transmit images by radio waves, for which he studied the explorer disk of Paul Nipkow (1860-1940), a German inventor and pioneer of television. This disc was a perfect circle with round perforations that, in a spiral pattern, got closer and closer to the center.

His inspiration came from the invention of the telegraph, the telephone and the radio, but it went back to the so-called pantelegraph, presented in 1856 by Giovanni Caselli (1815-1891), an Italian physicist and inventor who managed to transmit an image uploaded to his device at a distance..

The pantelegraph, which could be considered the predecessor of the fax, consisted of a surface where a metallic sheet was placed that carried the text or design to be transmitted. This text or design was reproduced with a special ink that sent an electrical signal to the receiving device when the transmitter's reader passed over the sheet.

With a substantial information base, John Logie Baird began creative production throughout most of his life. Next we will explain this process considering the chronological order in which it happened:

1922-1924

Baird devoted himself to the investigation of image transmission. At the end of this period he built a rudimentary device whose main component was the Nipkow disk. With this he transmitted the somewhat flickering image of a Maltese cross more than three meters away.

1926

On January 26, Baird held the first public display of his primitive television system in his laboratory - located in the Soho District, London. He did it in front of the press, scientists and scholars.

A marionette of his property became the only inanimate object that had appeared on television until then. Although it is true that the resolution of the image was poor, you could make out the face of the doll.

Later, during that same year, he managed to transmit an image signal between London and Glasgow (more than 600 kilometers away) by means of a telephone cable and founded the BTDC or Baird Television Development Company Ltd., to commercialize his recent invention.

At that time he was able to achieve a scan of 12.5 frames or images per second, managing for the first time to demonstrate that it was possible to receive the transmission of a live signal in motion.

1928

Following the success of its electro-mechanical television, it offered the first broadcast in color and stereoscopic television.

The first was achieved by combining special scan discs in the transmitter and receiver with a trio of aperture spirals, each with a separate light source. The spirals had filters that contained different primary colors and were alternately illuminated with a switch.

This year also changed the scale of scope and marked another milestone in the industry: using radio signals he managed to carry images from London to New York. Not satisfied with this, he repeated the experiment on an ocean liner with the same success.

1929-1930

At the beginning of this period his system attracted the attention of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), which considered it experimentally.

His invention was finally commercialized: the first device, the Plessey, was released, believed to be in at least 3,000 British homes and where viewers could watch test broadcasts.

In the mid-1930s John Baird was called in by the German government to fine-tune his own transmission system, the Fernkino, based on his discoveries.

Thanks to this, Germany was the first country to have a cable television network, and the inhabitants of Berlin and other cities in the area witnessed the opening of the 1936 Olympics.

1932

At this time, Baird's company had stations in Berlin, Paris, Rome, London, Moscow, and other cities, but progress did not stop and inventors did not stop making contributions. The story opened a space for Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian engineer, entrepreneur and inventor who took the lead from Baird.

Marconi was developing an electronic picture tube. The BBC made transmissions with both systems in 1937, in order to receive criticism from viewers, in order to decide which of them to implement definitively. Eventually Marconi was victorious.

1942

During World War II many of Baird's company broadcasting stations were affected or completely destroyed by German or Allied bombardments.

Baird then turned to color television research, demonstrating his electronic color tube on August 16.

References

1. "John Logie Baird: The Creator of Television and Waterproof Socks." Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from ABC España: abc.es
2. "History: John Logie Baird". Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from BBC: bbc.co.uk
3. "John Logie Bird". Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org
4. "Paul Nipkow". Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org
5. "Giovanni Caselli". Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org
6. "How stereoscopic television is shown." Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from Baird Television: bairdtelevision.com
7. "John Logie Baird". Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from Busca Biographies: Buscabiografias.com
8. "John Logie Baird: The Inventor of Television". Retrieved on November 20, 2018 from Inventionary: inventionary.com.ar