100 years ago today, in 1926, John Logie Baird gave the first demonstration of TV to Royal Institution members.
When I was born, in 1935, my father, John Logie Baird (1888-1946), was enjoying a rare spell of affluence.
Since its formation in 1926, Baird Television Ltd had only a handful of employees, struggling to promote the idea of television.
Then, in early 1932, the company was bought and greatly expanded by an eccentric millionaire, Isidore Ostrer, who owned Gaumont British Pictures Ltd.
Ostrer was interested in showing large-screen television in cinemas. The company moved to premises at the Crystal Palace in south London.
My father’s title in the enlarged company was Managing Director. This was a misnomer because most of his work was technical, while the administrative duties were divided among the board of directors.
However, he attended the board meetings and often made statements to the press. Last but not least, he received an annual salary of £4,000.
A few months before the takeover, JLB (as I shall call him) had rather abruptly got married to a young concert pianist from South Africa, Margaret Albu. They had met during one of the experimental television transmissions at the BBC. She was 24 to his 43.
The match was also unconventional in that she had no scientific or technical background, while JLB was tone deaf and could barely recognise a tune.
Nevertheless, the marriage was a success; my parents rarely had rows.
In 1932, the Bairds moved to a Victorian six-bedroom house with a large garden, at 3 Crescent Wood Road in Sydenham, not far from the company’s premises at the Crystal Palace.
My sister, Diana, was born in 1932 and I followed three years later. The household included a cook, a housemaid, a gardener and a nurse who looked after Diana and me. She was called Miss Yarker, but I called her Misharka. My mother had a magnificent Steinway grand piano, a wedding present from JLB: I vividly remember her practising and it gave me a lifelong taste for classical music.
JLB’s day-to-day work involved mainly his television research at the Crystal Palace, and he also had a private lab in the former coach house at 3 Crescent Wood Road. Diana and I saw quite a lot of him at mealtimes, when we were often joined by his young assistant, Paul Reveley, who lived on until 2017. We were seldom admitted to the lab and only ever under supervision, for obvious safety reasons.
I remember JLB as kind and soft-spoken, and also dreamy and preoccupied – hardly surprising in view of the pressures of his research and the equally demanding business side of television.
The original (1925) spinning-disc system of television, celebrating its centenary now, had provided only 30 lines of definition.
At the Crystal Palace, the skilled technicians were able to upgrade the definition to 240 lines, but this required a camera so large and heavy that it made the studio conditions very difficult.
Eventually, in early 1937, the BBC adopted the electronic system offered by the Marconi Company and EMI. This system (405 lines) was heavily based on the work of the American company RCA.
To make matters worse for Baird Television, in November 1936 the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. The fire was a mile away from our house. Legend has it I was held up to watch the glow in the night sky, but I have no recollection.
It says much for JLB and his colleagues that Baird Television did not collapse there and then. A few of its working buildings, including the Rotunda, survived, and the fire damage in the main building was covered by insurance.
A few years earlier, the company had astutely set up research groups on electronic television (cathode-ray tubes), working in parallel with the groups developing the mechanical system. After a period of frantic reorganisation, Baird Television continued as a manufacturer of 405-line receivers under licence, using the Baird brand name. JLB’s salary was slightly reduced, but was still generous.
Despite the setback with mechanical television, JLB remained in the public eye. In 1938, he was invited to Australia as the guest of honour of the Australian radio industry. My mother accompanied him and the trip lasted two months, including the round trip by ocean liner with a stop in India. She remembered this as the only holiday she ever had with JLB, apart from the occasional weekend in the South of France.
While my parents were out of the country, Diana and I were looked after at Sydenham by my father’s older sister Annie from the old family home in Helensburgh, with her faithful housekeeper Margaret Scott. These two fine people were to play a major part in my teenage years.
In his quiet way, JLB had developed a plan for the family in the event of war – which came in 1939. Sydenham was not safe from aerial bombing; it was only a few miles from the London docks, a prime target. Evacuation of the family was essential.
JLB decided on the small town of Bude on the north coast of Cornwall. Within a day or so of the declaration of war, my mother, Diana and I were on a train to Bude, where a hotel room had been booked. JLB had saved £15,000, but his salary had ceased in November 1939, when Baird Television Ltd went into receivership.
Throughout the war he continued to spend most of his time at the private lab in Sydenham, where he resumed his research with one or two assistants, working mainly on cathode-ray tubes for colour and stereoscopic pictures.
Eventually we settled in a small terrace house on Flexbury Park Road, near the golf course. Every month or so, JLB would come down to Bude for a few days’ badly needed rest. Often he would take Diana and me for long, slow walks along the beach.
He got me interested in science, especially optics. He showed me how a small glass prism would produce a vivid spectrum of colours when sunlight shone through it. More excitingly, when it was focused through a magnifying glass, enough heat was produced to set fire to a piece of paper.
The war dragged on and JLB worked on, with his savings gradually being eroded. By the end of the war, the house in Sydenham was dilapidated and JLB’s health was declining.
We moved to Bexhill-on-Sea, just along the coast from Hastings, where JLB had done most of his early experiments in 1923-25. A high spot came in the autumn of 1945 when Diana and I were shown his high-definition colour tube (the Telechrome). We were then taken to see a variety show in the West End. The star was JLB’s old school friend actor Jack Buchanan (1890-1957). We met him backstage.
The end came quietly: JLB died in his sleep at Bexhill on 14th June 1946, aged only 57. His funeral and burial took place at his birthplace in Helensburgh.
Later, my mother, Diana and I went to his memorial service at St Saviour’s, Chelsea, attended by many notables. It was only then that I realised that he was a famous figure.
