A Hundred Years Ago in Hastings – the Invention of Television
JUDE MONTAGUE delves into the Logie Baird archives at Hastings Museum
Jude Montague’s Interpretation
It’s a hundred years since John Logie Baird first transmitted images, transferring the outline of shapes from one site to another. The first successful experiment took place right in the centre of Hastings. Baird was born in 1888 at Helensborough in Scotland and was educated at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, but having for many years suffered from ill-health he thought the sea-air of England’s South Coast would help. In 1922 he moved to Hastings but continued to put his own well-being secondary to that of his passion for inventing.
As far back as his schooldays, Baird was interested in electricity and engineering and created a homemade generator to supply the lodge building with electric light. One of his inventions was to help soldiers combat trench foot with medicated stockings, marketed as ‘The Baird Undersock’. Others included an inadvertently corrosive soap and a glass razor. He tried out other opportunities in international trade, dabbling in Australian honey and Trinidadian jam.
In 1923 he created the first successful experience of ‘seeing by wireless’. The televised image was of outlines only. Though it is hard to pinpoint an exact date (and therefore hard to commemorate) it was probably in June, as Baird took out a patent for his ‘Televisor’ machine in July. At this point he concentrated on simple shapes and the first recorded image broadcast was of the Maltese Cross, an eight-pointed heraldic symbol of medieval bands of knights.
Following Baird’s footsteps, the town criss-crosses several different locations. He first set up his laboratory somewhere near Hastings Station, presumably in a building that no longer exists. When those premises were required for a shop, he moved to a large room at 21 Linton Crescent, according to H.T. Elgar of 59 Linton Road, who wrote to a newspaper to tell how Baird often came into his shop. Elgar would cut out pieces of tin and sheet brass for him and the customer told the shopkeeper that he was carrying out experiments in television in his own room. One morning Baird came in full of excitement, having successfully broadcast a blurred object! He asserted that he would keep on trying until he got a picture. Soon after this Baird moved his workshop and Elgar lost touch with the inventor.
V. R. Mills, of 227 St Helen’s Road, was interviewed for a fascinating article ‘How Television Began’ in which he described how he first met Baird when he came to his house to consult about selenium cells. By this time Baird had moved into a new lab at the Queen’s Arcade (Avenue), number 8, where he took a room over a flower shop with a friend, Guy Robertson. Mills describes their set up vividly: “There was junk everywhere and I trod on old bits of wire, newspaper, plywood, etc.” The transmitter never actually produced results at the Arcade. To produce an effective current, Baird wired up 100 pocket lamp batteries in series to produce a 2,000 volt power supply. In reckless disregard for his own safety he did not wear insulating gloves and gave himself a shock which hurt his hands. This was reported in the local paper in July 1924 in an article ‘Serious Explosion in Hastings Lab’, whereon his landlord, Mr Twigg, gave him notice to quit.
Baird moved his Televisor back to Linton Crescent where, according to Mills, it produced flickering on a screen on the opposite end of the room – images of squares, triangles and other simple figures. The Televisor was was made out of an old tea-chest which formed the base to carry the motor which rotated the Nipkow discs that allowed the selection of visual waves that would then be amplified to carry to image from one location to another. The apparatus was assembled on a washstand which stood in for a laboratory bench. Other materials mentioned were hat boxes, string, sealing wax, darning needles and scrapwood. Louise Leighton, looking back, remembered Baird buying lots of 7lb biscuit tins, not just for the biscuits. He would cut them up and use the metal to construct the machine. “We often gave Mr Baird and his friend a cup of tea, and I have often wondered what happened to the friend who used to walk about the Avenue in his sandals and without socks, a rare thing in 1924.” Mills in turn recollected many people staring and pointing at them both as they both went around town in the full character of absent-minded inventors. Mills is later recorded as living at 35 Ghyllside Drive.
As Baird’s apparatus became more involved and more expensive he started going without food to save money. He was prepared to put all he had into the development of the Televisor and he had a strong idea of how it could be applied, writing to the established film entrepreneur Mr Will Day for financial backing. In the early 1920s, the regular newsreel that would play alongside a fiction feature film was a staple of the cinema experience. But news footage was recorded on film and then shipped at great speed through the distribution networks. If Baird’s television technology could broadcast moving pictures as they happened live in cinema it would replace those news films and make going to the cinema more immediate and exciting. In July 1924 he told the Hastings press that “It is now only a question of time . . . until we can sit in a cinema hundreds of miles away and witness the finish of the Derby transmitted by wireless onto the screen.”
In late 1924, when some money finally arrived, Baird left Hastings to go to London. On 25 March 1925 he gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion at Selfridges department store in London. He used cut-outs in order to step up the contrast beyond that of a human face, to make sure they showed up on his system. He painted a ventriloquist’s dummy to highlight the contrast of its features and named it ‘Stooky Bill’. On October 2 1925 Stooky Bill’s head appeared clearly on the screen. On January 26, 1926, real human faces were transmitted in image at the Royal Institution, and this has been widely accepted as the world’s first public television demonstration.
Thank you to the Hastings Museum for allowing me access to the Logie Baird archives and the papers and letters there that have enabled me to follow the inventor through history as he brought his television system into being.
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I was a little girl in the early-1970s and lived on Ghyllside Ave. I remember Mr Mills clearing the brambles that grew from his garden over the pavement so I could ride my bike. We struck up an great friendship and I would spend many hours sitting in his house talking with him. On very special occasions I was allowed into his work room. The room was awe-inspiring to a six year old, full of important instruments in glass display cabinets. I remember a lot of brass and a projector with a back an white Disney film in it. It was lovely to read this article and remember my friend Mr Mills.