John Logie Baird

John Logie Baird is someone whose name is virtually unknown to most Americans. He was a gifted Scotsman who managed to perfect the world's first working television system. Baird announced his invention while living in Great Britain in 1924 and a year later provided a well-publicized public demonstration of his mechanical television system at a famous London department store. The general public, both in the United States and in Europe, was just beginning to appreciate how radio was fast becoming an important part of their everyday lives. Now they learned that someone had perfected a way that both sound as well as pictures could be sent directly into their homes. In 1927, Baird was able to transmit television signals clear across the Atlantic Ocean from London to New York. Only 25 years before, Guglielmo Marconi sent coded wireless messages across the same ocean, which at the time, was universally hailed as a technological milestone that would literally change the world. The following year, John Baird publicly demonstrated the world's first means of transmitting color television images. He also invented stereoscopic television and perfected a method of recording television programs on disks. Using infrared imaging techniques he developed a means that made it possible for television cameras to "see in the dark." Calling his invention "Noctovision", his basic methods were improved upon by others who perfected what we commonly refer to today as radar. Before perfecting his television inventions, Baird was a cunning and creative entrepreneur and engineer who worked on a number of unusual and occasionally successful business ventures. Although you may never had heard his name before, Baird's story deserves to be told.