Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of J.L. Baird finally getting television right. He’d actually demonstrated the technology a few months earlier, but it was at an even more primtive stage at that point. on October 2nd 1925, he finally got a recognisable image, firstly of the Doctor Who-immortalising Stooky Bill, then of the factory’s office boy William Taynton, who offered a charming reminiscence of the big day for its 40th anniversary, as recounted in this article (with video of him, too—good grief, another piece of vintage BBC vision they actually kept!). The article also offers this fascinating snippet of what he did before making TV when he couldn’t serve in WW1:
Instead, he began work for an electricity company while retaining a fiercely entrepreneurial streak. Inspired by a short story by his idol, science-fiction writer HG Wells, he attempted to make artificial diamonds out of carbon by using huge amounts of electricity. He succeeded only in knocking out part of Glasgow’s power supply. As for a disastrous homemade haemorrhoid cure, it was a textbook example of the type of activity that would have future television presenters warning, “Don’t try this at home.”
…How the FUCK can you write a phrase like “disastrous homemade haemorrhoid cure” without explaining exactly what went wrong with it? Or maybe we’re better off not knowing? Either way, happy hundredth, JLB, your particular technology might’ve had a limited future but you proved it worked nonetheless, and you were right about just how far it would spread one day…
