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Logie Baird’s ‘Televisor’
John Logie Baird applied himself to creating a television. His first crude apparatus sat on a washstand - the base of his motor was a tea chest, a biscuit tin housed the projection lamp and scanning discs were cut from cardboard. Scrap wood, darning needles, string, and sealing wax held the apparatus together.
By 1924 he managed to transmit across a few feet the flickering image of a Maltese cross from his prototype. On 26 January 1926, he gave the world's first demonstration of true television in his attic workshop.
In 1927 his television signal was transmitted over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow, and he formed the Baird Television Development Company, Ltd. (BTDC). In 1928 the BTDC achieved the first transatlantic television transmission between London and New York and the first transmission to a ship in the mid-Atlantic. He also gave the first demonstration of both colour and stereoscopic television.
Although Baird is chiefly remembered for mechanical television, his developments were not limited to this alone. In 1930 he demonstrated big-screen television in the London Coliseum, as well as Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm.
Presenter Vanessa Collingridge says: "It’s an invention whose effect on the world and society as we know it is immeasurable. A device that informs, entertains, educates and shapes our lives from the moment we are born..."
Where can it be found? National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
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