90th Anniversary Of TV

[Stearmen]

For better or worse, 90 years ago, January 26, 1926, Scottish born John Logie Baird publicly demonstrated the first Television! In front of the Royal Institution Of Great Britain, with a reporter from the Times London, he transmitted the image of a person with a ventriloquist dummy, (and it has been dumbing down ever since!). He called the device a Televisor. The Times reporter was not impressed.

 

[emigran]

I very often think of today's youngest who do not know life without multiple hand-held devices...I remember when my grandparents got their first color TV ('53-54 ??) they were the only ones on the block and proudly stood in front of it for a photo portrait (which I have )
Great photo...

 

[LizzieMaine]

That disembodied head marked "A" is Stooky Bill, a ventriloquist dummy which served as Baird's favorite test subject. ("Stooky" is Scots for something made out of plaster.) The head was used because the lights were too hot for human subjects to sit under for very long -- even Bill suffered, with his paint blistering and cracking under the beams.

Baird also developed a system for recording his television signals on an ordinary phonograph record -- they sound like a buzz saw if you play them back as sound, but if you play them thru the appropriate viewing system, you can see what television looked like at its birth. Technician Donald McLean developed a way to recover the images using modern computer software, and you can view his results at www.tvdawn.com.

 

[Edward]

I very often think of today's youngest who do not know life without multiple hand-held devices...I remember when my grandparents got their first color TV ('53-54 ??) they were the only ones on the block and proudly stood in front of it for a photo portrait (which I have )
Great photo...

I remember one of my grandmothers getting her first colour TV in 1983, and not being sure she liked it. She'd had the old B&W model from some time in the sixties, and had never felt the need to 'upgrade' to colour, but by this point, it was next to impossible to find a B&W set that wasn't a very small, bedroom / caravan portable. I remember dad saying "Mother, if you don't like it, I can just turn down the colour button, and you can watch in black and white," and her saying "I'm sure i'll get used to it."

 

[Stearmen]

That disembodied head marked "A" is Stooky Bill, a ventriloquist dummy which served as Baird's favorite test subject. ("Stooky" is Scots for something made out of plaster.) The head was used because the lights were too hot for human subjects to sit under for very long -- even Bill suffered, with his paint blistering and cracking under the beams.

Baird also developed a system for recording his television signals on an ordinary phonograph record -- they sound like a buzz saw if you play them back as sound, but if you play them thru the appropriate viewing system, you can see what television looked like at its birth. Technician Donald McLean developed a way to recover the images using modern computer software, and you can view his results at www.tvdawn.com.

Thanks Lizzie! It is incredible how far TV has come. Even though I am watching less today, I still can appreciate how people can now watch TV on their watch. Dick Tracy would be amazed!

 

[MisterCairo]

The Times reporter was not impressed.

Have they ever been?