by Krishna Nadella
For those that had a chance to read my last submission to the NY NATAS Quarterly Newsletter, ‘Of Televisions & Telephones’, you will recall that I mentioned my relationship with Dr. Malcolm Baird:
(Photo: Heathcliff O'Malley)
“Dr. Malcolm Baird is the son of John Logie Baird, one of the inventors of the mechanical television and inventor of both the first publicly demonstrated color television system and the first purely electronic color television picture tube.”
Over the last several years, Dr. Malcolm Baird and I have had the opportunity to thankfully reconnect since my days growing up in Canada, primarily through my father, Dr. Venkata Nadella. Like most relationships between fathers and sons, I was always intrigued by Dr. Baird’s and in a NY NATAS first, he was willing to participate in a sit-down interview to talk about that very relationship.
Krishna C. Nadella: What was it like to grow up as the son of John Logie Baird?
Malcolm Baird: Tough question. As a kid I took it for granted, as kids do. For safety reasons I was not normally allowed into the lab, but I do remember seeing color television in 1945. This was not mechanical television, it used my father’s patented cathode ray tube which was known as “the Telechrome”. It was the world’s first color cathode ray tube. After my father’s death in 1946, I took up science and became interested in chemistry. Although I had no ambitions to join the television industry, every few years I would be asked to media functions or sometimes to take part in radio and television programs about my father. Since retiring in 2000, I have written a biography called ‘John Logie Baird, a life’, with the historian Antony Kamm. The book length was originally planned to be 150 pages, but the published version was 450 pages long, not including end notes!
KCN: What were your father’s motivations that kept pushing him to continue with his work?
MB: For the answer to this, we must go back to his early childhood in Scotland. He had narrowly survived a serious illness in 1890 when he was two years old; for years after this his health was “delicate” and he tended to miss his school classes due to colds and fevers. He did a lot of reading – above all, the works of H.G. Wells, whose scientific stories inspired him to “discover” something. He was also inspired by public figures such as Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers and Alexander Graham Bell. One of his teenage projects was to set up a telephone system between his house and neighbors’ houses. Later, he and his friends attempted to fly in a sort of box kite glider that was launched from the roof of the family home. The idea of television came to him in about 1902 after he had read the H.G. Wells story ‘The Sleeper Awakes’, but he soon discovered that the photoelectric effect of light on selenium was very weak. The idea stayed at the back of his mind until 1921 when electronic amplifiers were available. After about 1932 he switched from mechanical techniques to electronic techniques including high-definition color television and 3-D imaging. He was still filing patents in the last year of his life.
KCN: How has television changed your life as a member of the general public and as the son of John Logie Baird?
MB: As I said in answer to question 1, at first I took my father’s occupation for granted. Between 1947 and 1960 I was based in Scotland, where television broadcasting didn’t start until 1952. The BBC programs were low-budget with black-and- white pictures on a small screen for a few hours per day, with one channel only. The big public event was the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 and in the UK it marked the birth of television as a “mass medium”. By 1960 I had embarked on a demanding career in chemical engineering and I did not have much time for watching television, although I was an early fan of ‘The Prisoner’ series which has since become a cult show. It foresaw a sinister world of electronic surveillance and mind control. Since retiring I have had far more time to do research on my father’s life and the history of television. The main result of this was the book ‘John Logie Baird, a life’ as mentioned above. Also I have written many articles and reports which can be seen on the website www.bairdtelevision.com. I no longer watch much broadcast television, with the occasional exception of the weather reports, or when I am at the dentist. Program quality has gone downhill since the conventional broadcast television industry has become financially stretched. Its income from commercials has declined, because of the fragmentation of the viewing audience between many competing channels and alternative electronic media.
KCN: Did your father ever engage or collaborate with other inventors of his time?
MB: From about 1921 to 1932 my father was a one-man show. His small company depended very much on public interest and his colleagues were publicity people such as Oliver Hutchinson and Sydney Moseley. More importantly, he had some very able technical assistants, most of whom were radio amateurs, such as Ben Clapp. But money was short, until in 1932 Baird Television was taken over by the the UK’s major movie company, Gaumont British Pictures. By this time, electronic television was becoming a viable alternative to mechanical television and the Baird Company hired many electronic physicists, some of whom had entered Britain as refugees from Europe. By 1936, Baird Television had about a dozen research groups, some of which were working on electronic television. That leads on to your next question (below).
KCN: What was your father’s relationship with Philo Farnsworth (he is credited with the invention of the electrical television)?
MB: My father was well aware of Farnsworth’s work on electronic television. One of his employees, Jan Forman, had worked with Farnsworth in Philadelphia in the early 1930s before joining Baird Television. In 1935, a competition was held for the contract to provide a high definition television system for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The Baird Company had been operating an experimental mechanical system for the BBC since 1929, but its definition was limited to 30 lines.
Electronic cameras were gradually evolving in the USA and the two main players were RCA and Farnsworth’s small company. RCA had a very large research division which supported television research under Dr. Vladimir K. Zworykin. Farnsworth’s company on the other hand had very limited resources. RCA’s television patents were available to a UK consortium called Marconi-EMI which had been set up to compete with Baird Television for the BBC contract.
By 1936, the Baird Company had developed their mechanical system to a definition of 240 lines. They had also developed an “intermediate film” process in which the studio program was photographed on movie film, the film was then rapidly processed in special tanks and then optically scanned to provide a television signal. The Baird Directors felt that their company should also be offering electronic television in the competition, but they did not have access to the RCA patents. Instead, they approached Philo Farnsworth who was in bitter rivalry with RCA. The Baird Company paid Farnsworth $50,000 for a working prototype electronic camera which was shipped over to the UK for further development in their laboratories. Farnsworth and his wife were dinner guests at our London house during the BBC competition in late 1936. Sadly for my father, the BBC contract was won by Marconi-EMI. The leader of their research team, Dr. Isaac Schoenberg, vehemently claimed that their electronic television was an all British achievement. That view was not shared by RCA.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of my interview with Dr. Malcolm Baird as we discuss his father’s contributions to society, his place in history and his lasting legacy.
-Krishna C. Nadella is the Host & Producer of ‘STATE OF MIND with Krishna C. Nadella’