Chapter One: A Son Of The Manse

John Logie Baird entered this world at 8 a.m. on 13th August 1888 in a grey sandstone house called “The Lodge”, which was situated in Argyle Street, Helensburgh, Dumbartonshire, Scotland. John was the youngest of four children born to the Rev. John Baird and his wife, Jessie (nee: Morrison Inglis) who was from a family of prominent shipbuilders in Glasgow. From his childhood Baird suffered from ill health and at one time he was not expected to live beyond his young years. He had, however, an extremely active childhood and at the age of six he went to a local school with his sisters, before transferring to a boys school, and at the age of ten, to Larchfield Academy. He was by no means a brilliant scholar, his health being a constant handicap to his education, but in spite of a delicate constitution he quickly established himself as the leader of the youth of the village.

“The Lodge” soon became a hive of engineering activity, and the young Baird’s first experimental work may be said to be connected with the telephone, for the aid of youthful friends he rigged up a circuit consisting of the conventional two biscuit tins connected with string.ª It wasn’t long before Baird was looking for ways to improve on this crude method of communication and he soon set about devising a circuit made from wire nails bound round with wire, two tins and an electric battery. This would later be developed further still into an elaborate telephone exchange in his bedroom with wires slung precariously across several streets of his neighbourhood, connecting four of his friends. Baird would be the exchange operator and beside each plug he made nameplates bearing the names of his schoolmates who were linked to the system –Whimster, Bruce, Norwell and Wadsworth. However, on one stormy night a telephone wire blew down in a gale as a hansom cab was driving past. The luckless cabman was caught under the chin and lifted off his seat. Under the impression that the wires were the property of the newly formed National Telephone Company, the cab driver laid claim for damages. It was only then that the company realised they were competing against an unauthorised rival and subsequently Baird’s system was forcibly withdrawn from service.

Undeterred by the closure of this venture Baird followed it up by single-handedly installing an electric light plant at the old church house. The current was generated by a homemade dynamo, driven by a water wheel worked from the water main and a symposium of accumulators made out of old jam jars and sheet lead.ª Another of young Baird’s keen interests was in photography, and a club was formed with Baird as president and his friend, Jack Buchanan (later to become a famous theatrical star) as the leading spirit. Annie Baird (John’s sister) remembered Buchanan as a “neat and tidy boy, always well dressed and fond of music,” while she described her brother as, “carelessly dressed, had perpetually ruffled hair, seemed to keep his mind in the clouds and invariably looked as if he had been drawn through a hedge backwards.” Even with the photographic club Baird displayed his inventive spirit by immersing himself further into the subject matter than most of his friends. He enlarged photographs first through a hole in the window shutter and then by means of a magic lantern. He also experimented with delayed exposure photography and with the aid of a flashlight he managed to photograph himself in bed asleep.

At the age of twelve Baird turned his attention to the skies, and with help from another friend, Godfrey Harris, he built a glider, which he launched from the flat roof of “The Lodge”. It was one of his less successful experiments as he recalled years later in his autobiography, Sermons, Soap and Television. “I had no intention of flying, but before I had time to give more than one shriek of alarm, Godfrey gave the machine one terrific push, and I was launched shrieking into the air. I had a few very nauseating seconds while the machine rocked wildly and then broke in half and deposited me with a terrific bump on the lawn.”

At the age of seventeen or eighteen Baird entered the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, to follow a course for electrical engineering. By amazing coincidence among his fellow students was J.C.W. Reith, also the son of a manse and destined to one day become the Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, who Baird would one day turn to for facilities that would enable him to conduct many of his television experiments. But there was to be no friendship between the two students. Reith’s tendency to bully landed him in hot water numerous times and eventually, following complaints from the parents of two young boys, Reith’s father was forced to withdraw him from the college.

Baird stayed and passed the course with distinction and despite the protests of his father, who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and enter the Church; John took his Associateship and then went to Glasgow University where he studied Electrical Engineering and Pure Physics. At this time he brought out an invention for dispensing with the commutator on the direct current motor. He studied for the B.Sc. degree and would most certainly have passed, having gone through the entire curriculum. However, a few months before he was due to take his final exams World War 1 broke out, and although he intended to return to finish his studies he never did.

Chapter Two: Baird The Business Man