John Logie Baird

[Captain Video]

What maybe was the first time him and the term "television" appeared on the Brazilian press - "O Globo" newspaper, Rio de Janeiro , December 13, 1926:

[MadMan]

"Let's have a disc with holes it it that spins REALLY fast! Also buy my socks!"

[nasadowsk]

Some book (I think Please Stand By) said that when the BBC was testing his system and EMI's electronic one, they were both at the same studio. He saw the EMI electronic set, walked over to it, looked at the picture for a minute or two, then walked away, and pulled his system from testing the next day.

He knew he was done.

[ppppenguin]

Seems a bit unlikely. By the time of the 1936/7 trials Baird was no more than a figurehead in the company.

It is, of course, true that the M-EMI pictures were better than Baird's, except for the telecine where Baird's flying spot system was undoubtedly superior to M-EMI's camers based device. The 240 line system wasn't hugely inferior to 405, though the 25Hz refresh rate gave more noticeable flicker. Baird also had a rather better lighting rig than M-EMI, through their connections to the film industry.

The really big problems were in production.

M-EMI had 3 flexible and mobile cameras which gave immediate pictures. Reliability was a problem, as were the continual adjustments needed for "tilt and bend".

Baird had a ragbag of a flying spot camera for a single announcer, intermediate film with 30s delay and bolted to the floor and the Farnsworth Electron camera which didn't really work at all at the time. Complete nightmare for making programmes.

What's less well know is that the Baird company actually built an iconoscope camera. They didn't have the patent rights to use it. RCA and Zworykin had the original iconoscope patents. M-EMI had rights to RCA patents because the Marconi company had a patent sharing agreement. There is much debate as to how much of the Emitron camera tube development was simply copying RCA's work. EMI's engineers certainly knew a lot about RCA's work but it's not certain how much of their work was independent of RCA.

[peter scott]

Baird's mechanical stuff was fun but irrelevant. http://www.nostalgiatech.co.uk/new_page_35.htm

Peter