The first live TV audience found it hard to believe that it would take off. Now the invention of the mechanical television has been marked with a Google Doodle
Ninety years ago today a moving head on a screen made history. It was the first public demonstration of live television, and the occasion is being marked with a Google Doodle.The face in question belonged to Daisy Elizabeth Gandy, the business partner of John Logie Baird. Baird is a Scottish inventor who is regarded as one of the inventors of the mechanical television.
The mechanical television, also known as “the televisor” worked a bit like a radio, but had a rotating mechanism attached that could generate a video to accompany the sound. It preceded the modern television, which creates images using electronic scanning.
In 1924 Baird managed to transmit a flickering image across a distance of 10 feet and the following year, he had a breakthrough when he achieved TV pictures with light and shade.
Within two years this flicker was the face of a woman who was in a different room.Although the pictures were small, measuring just 3.5 by 2 inches, the process was revolutionary.
“The image as transmitted was faint and often blurred, but substantiated a claim that through the ‘televisor,’ as Mr Baird has named his apparatus, it is possible to transmit and reproduce instantly the details of movement, and such things as the play of expression on the face,” wrote the reporter from the Times after the demonstration.
As innovative as the demonstration had been, the journalist wasn’t coFollowing his demonstration in 1926, he developed colour TV and brought out the world's first mass produced television set in 1929.
In September last year, an anonymous donor stepped in to prevent a recording of Baird's first transmission of transatlantic television pictures being sold to private collectors overseas.
The materials, which include a disc featuring what has been described as one of the world's earliest surviving video recordings, are now stored at the University of Glasgow along with much of the Scottish inventor's other work.
An asking price of £78,750 was put on the "treasure trove" archive and an export bar was placed on the lot to see if any British buyers would step in.nvinced that it would take off.
“It has yet to be seen to what extent further developments will carry Mr Baird’s system towards practical use,” they wrote.
Still, that was better than the reaction of the Daily Express newspaper who, when Baird approached them with the invention in 1925, kicked him out.
The news editor at the time said: “For God’s sake, go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who’s down there. He says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless!”
The purchase of the collection was made possible with the financial support of a businessman from Baird's hometown of Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, who wished to remain anonymous.
The recording and radio log books, used by assistant Benjamin Clapp, contain the world's first-known use of the acronym TV.
The donor, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: "[The collection] charts such an important period of modern engineering history, so I felt it could not, and should not, leave these shores to move abroad. It needs to be shared for future generations.
"John Logie Baird was a Helensburgh man and a Scottish pioneer who helped change the world, and with his ties to the University of Glasgow I think it is only right and proper that this important collection should be coming to the university, and hopefully it will help inspire future pioneering engineers."
The phonovision shellac disc, dating back to September 20 1927, is the world's oldest-surviving 78rpm video recording and features pictures of Stooky Bill, the ventriloquist's dummy Baird used when developing his revolutionary mechanical scanning broadcasts.
It was recorded during his transatlantic television trials but was not actually transmitted until February 9 1928, marking one of Baird's earliest television broadcasts
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