Helensburgh Heritage Trust
Helensburgh Heritage Trust
In this article, based on a talk she gave to the University of Strathclyde alumni group known as 'The Tech Club' on April 19 2006 and specially adapted in 2011 for the Helensburgh Heritage Trust website, Mrs Diana Richardson, daughter of TV pioneer John Logie Baird, recalled her father's life and work.
MENTION the name of Helensburgh-born John Logie Baird, and the words inventor of television immediately come to mind. But this was not his first successful invention.
That was not at all technical, yet in the year it was on sale, he made a profit of £1,600 — which equates to £34,000 today.
In this article specially written for the Helensburgh Heritage Trust website, Trust president Professor Malcolm Baird, son of TV pioneer John Logie Baird, recalls his childhood and student days.
I WAS born on July 2 1935 at the family home at 3 Crescent Wood Road in Sydenham, a south eastern suburb of London.
THE earliest book on television — signed by Helensburgh TV inventor John Logie Baird — sold for £1,400 at the Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs Sale at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on November 23 2010.
The book, entitled Television, was donated anonymously to the Oxfam charity shop in Morningside, Edinburgh, and dates back to 1926. Staff did not realise its significance until one flicked through it some time after it was received.
HELENSBURGH TV inventor John Logie Baird failed to win enough online votes in 2010 to be featured on a new £5 coin being issued by the Royal Mint — and was beaten by a Beatle!
He faced stiff competition from Jane Austen, Douglas Bader, Sir Walter Raleigh, Emmeline Pankhurst and John Lennon to become the latest Great Briton on a new coin being struck by the Royal Mint.
ON June 14 1946, Helensburgh-born TV inventor John Logie Baird died in his sleep at home in Bexhill at the age of 57. Thirty years after his death, a Helensburgh commemorative exhibition had a remarkable visitor.
On May 31 that year a 26-day town celebration began with the opening of the main exhibition in the then Templeton Library in James Street, with the ceremony conducted by a local man and Baird expert, Professor E.S.Fairley, the depute principal of the University of Strathclyde.
THREE members of John Logie Baird's family are seen in this picture taken in April 1952.
It shows the TV inventor's older sister Annie and his children Diana and Malcolm being presented with a television set from the Scophany Television Company.
Book review by Malcolm Baird, the inventor’s son, president of Helensburgh Heritage Trust
Images Across Space: the electronic imaging of Baird Television.
Douglas Brown
A NEW book about Helensburgh-born inventor of television John Logie Baird has just been published.
'Images Across Space: the electronic imaging of Baird Television' is a 180-page paperback written by Dr Douglas Brown of Strathclyde University.
THE BBC showed two programmes in early November 2009 about Helensburgh TV inventor John Logie Baird, one old and one new.
The new programme was part of the series entitled "The Scots who made the modern world" and a short section of the programme was devoted to John Logie Baird.
Click the image above
