SEEING BY WIRELESS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 12075, 14 October 1933, Page 9

SEEING BY WIRELESS

BAIRD’S WONDERFUL (TENTHS

SUCCESS FOLLOWS FAILURES.

If is little more than nine years since John Logie Baird', a young Scot with. a. quieter manner and an extraordinary shock of tousled hair, moved into the two attic rooms of No. 22 Fritlv street, of Soho Square. London, and: set up his seientitle apparatus. For several months he toiled in the obscurity of his attic without attracting very much attenention. »rom his neighbours, iwlio referred to him vaguely as the “inventor fellow.’ 1 One day William Tanytou, an offico hoy working on the floor below, was surprised to see Baird' throw open the door in a state id intense excitement, his shirt open aft the neck and his hair in a tangle. For a few moments the startled office hoy listened to a hood of agitated Scots before he realised that his presence was needed urgently upstairs. Greatly wondering and a litto dubious, the office hoy followed Baird* and was directed* to sit before a row of intensely powerful electric lights which almost scorched his face. At first the glare was too dazzling and he turned away, but after he had received a tip of liaTf-a-crown ho obeyed. From the other attic Baird called to him to turn his head and open and shut his mouth. It was not until tlie two changed places that the office- boy realised what had happened. Ho was tlie first human being to be- seen hy television.

It was on October 2, 1925, almost exactly eight years ago, that Raivt saw tho first recognisable image nv a- human, face, complete with shading and detail, upon a. receiving screen. That date is generally selected as the birthday of television but itr was neither the beginning nor the end of his experiments. Tho image • of Taynton as ho saw if. was blurred mvl indisiinor ami turned wnh reddish light, lint it was true television a> distinct from the mere transmission of coarse shadows which Haird had achieved IS months earlier with a. crude apparatus improvised from old hat,boxes, cardboard, sealing wax. and glue. Compared with the latest achievement a of this inventive genius, however, it was crude enough. Baird has the distinction not only of being tho invenotr of television, but also the perfoctor of the .system. By his unaided efforts to improve upon his achievement, until in IH2B he demonstrated television in natural colours. To-dav a clear, lighted image of a man who he has brought it to -such a point 0.1 perfection that an audience can see is sitting in the dark miles away. THE BOY INVENTOR Tho invention of television is the work of Baird’s life, hut he has tried his hand at enough other enterprises to demonstrate that his inventive genius would 1 have made him .successful in any or a- score of occupations. The story- of Baird’s amazingly crowded life has been told at last bv n London journalist Mr Ronald F. Tiltman, and it makes fascinating he was a sen of the manse. Born at Helcnsborough, Dumbartonshire, in reading. Like so many groat; Scots ISSB, ho is only 45 years of -age today, yet he has tried more things and achieved greater things than most living people. His 'childhood, like his early manhood 1 , was a perpetual struggle between his restless energy and his fragile physique. Although nob expected to reach maturity. ho seems to Have possessed remarkable energy' and tenacity, for Air Tiltman relates that with his bosom friend, Jack Buchanan—of stage and .screen fame, greater than Baird’s mini—he was always a leader of hoys of tho village, and his inventive faculty early manifested itself. His first venture was to rig up a. miniature telephone exchange connecting his bedroom with the bedrooms of some of his friend’s in neighbouring streets. One stormy night a wire stretching across a street blew down and caught a cabman under the chin. Tlie modest telephone system was immediately -suppressed, and 1 the- young inventor turned his hand to fdcctricitv. Generating his current hy a home-made dynamo, driven by a water-wheel worked from the -water main. he equipped the manse with an efficient electric tight plant- before the luxury was gnown *io the other houses in the village. It- iwas lu’s ill-health that turned Baird’s irrepressible activity to the solution of tho problems of television at the age. of .15, hut he bad dabbed in them since youth. RTs earliest researches into television had no practical results beyond annoying his parents, for he was forced to uso the kitchen as his laboratory, rmd tho smell of burning selenium which accompanied all his work did not mingle pleasantly with, the cooking.

The outbreak of the war interrupted Baird’s course at the University of Glasgow, and, having been rejected as unfit for mditaiw service, he cast about to earn his living. During the war he worked as superintendent engineer to a large engineering company, but the strain of engineering work taxed his health so severely that- he was compelled' to abandon it as soon as the war ended. For the next six years Baird’s life was a Series wf disappointments. Enterprise after enterprise presented- it-

.self to his active intellect, but his health was never good long enough for any of thorn to he successful. In taint hi- patented a new type ot medicated nndersOck, a- special shoe cleaner, and half a dozen other devices. He established a jam factory in the wilds of Trinidad anti dealt m Australian honey, coir fibre dust, and soap,