A German-Scottish co-operation...
When I don't sit in Alexandra Palace - that's in the moment between 10 and 17, I behave like a "normal" tourist. Not always I want to go into town - before Christmas it is like hell's broken loose. Sometimes I seek for a quiet place and that one can find on Muswell Hill.
One of my walks brought me to a Pub which was called "Baird". Contrary to John Gwynne, the Sky commentator the name meant nothing to me, but John seems to know more or less anything anyway.
As John Logie Baird after whom the pub is named which has no dartboard by the way . has something to do with dart though more that we can follow such tournaments like the World Championship on TV my article today deals with John Logie Baird and a German-Scottish cooperation.
Well at least with something like that as the German inventor Nipkow was already dead when John Logie Baird started with his experiments.
Baird is the inventor of the mechanic television. He was born in Helensburg in Scotland. As he didn't intend to become a clergyman nor to go to sea and so his professional opportunities' were bad in Scotland he moved as many young Scots to London.
To be able to survive he had to work though he only wanted to invent a "television" or a "televisor". Already in the mid of the 19. century the idea of television - to see from the distance turned up and Baird was enthusiastic to develop an apparatus by which pictures of events could be televised all over the world.
And at this point the German inventor Paul Nipkow appears on the scene. Nipkow had in 1840 developed a primitive televisor - the "elektrische Teleskop" which reflected when spun with the help of a stanced disc divers objects. Nipkow never had success with his invention, but Baird developed it further and after a lot of setbacks and always in need of money he in 1924 at Selfridges the big warehouse in London he could present his televisor to the amazed crowd.
He developed the televisor further and further, worked for some time together with the BBC which at this time was only a radio station, but realised one couldn't ignore the new invention. Baird in 1928 managed for the first time a transatlantic transmission of television pictures.
In the long run mechanic television had no chance against electronic television invented by American Farnsworth and Baird in 1930 turned to electronic television as well though he still for some years constructed mechanical apparatus.
Baird invented to transmit sound, he invented colour television, high definition television, the broadcasting van and had the idea of pre-recorded television. During the second World War he experimented with colour TV.
In 1946 Baird died in London. Some important Australian TV awards are named after him - and a pub on Muswell Hill. He still is under the 100 best known public figures in the United Kingdom.