John Logie Baird
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The engineer who demonstrated working television to the Royal Institution on 26 January 1926, to an audience that did not appear to realise what it had seen.
Not one attending member published a comment afterwards. The only first-hand account was a short item in The Times two days later, and a prospective investor visiting that April concluded it would be an error of judgment to bring the equipment to market. The date is now treated as the birth of television and was, on the day, unremarkable to the experts in the room - which places it beside Kao being ridiculed and Ohm being ignored. Baird's mechanical system then lost within a decade to all-electronic television built on the cathode ray tube, whose lineage runs back to Crookes: first to a working demonstration, and not the design that won.
Also known as: baird, television, frith street
Sources
- Baird's demonstration to members of the Royal Institution on the evening of 26 January 1926: none of the attending members published any comment, suggesting they had not recognised the significance; the only first-hand report appeared in The Times two days later as a minor event, and in April 1926 a prospective investor concluded it would be an error of judgment to place the equipment on the market
- Baird was the first to achieve easily discernible images; in 1928 he made the first overseas broadcast from London to New York over telephone lines and demonstrated colour television; in 1932 RCA demonstrated all-electronic television using a cathode ray tube and Zworykin's iconoscope camera tube, greatly improving picture quality