A century ago, John Logie Baird achieved a landmark moment in television history. The viewers weren’t convinced

In 1926, the West End of London offered a dazzling range of evening entertainment. Choices included watching Fred Astaire and his sister Adele on stage at the old Empire theatre in Lady, Be Good!, or experiencing The Big Parade silent movie at the Tivoli on the Strand with a full live orchestra.

But on a damp Tuesday evening 100 years ago, around 40 members of the Royal Institution – one of the UK’s most influential science research and education charities – chose instead to visit a makeshift laboratory on an upper floor at 22 Frith Street in Soho.

Reportedly all attired in evening dress, they were responding to an invitation from the then little-known Scottish inventor John Logie Baird. The event became a landmark moment in television history.

Baird successfully demonstrated an experimental prototype that could augment broadcast radio with live moving pictures. It was the world’s first demonstration of a mechanical television system able to show human faces. At the time, Baird called the display a “televisor”.

The best account of the evening came from William Chaney Fox, a Press Association journalist and close friend of Baird. He recalled that the demonstration room in Frith Street could only accommodate a handful of people, each of whom was televised while other guests inspected the received image in an adjacent room.

Fox had been put in charge of the unexpectedly large turnout. But as each group departed, he overheard that most viewers were not much impressed with what they had seen.

A much sought-after dream

By the start of the 20th century, sending still images over long distances by telegraph had become routine. But watching moving pictures at a distance remained a much sought-after dream.

Over the following decades, company-funded research departments (notably in the US, Germany and UK) sought to develop all-electronic television from scratch. Years of costly research and development finally resulted in these prototype TV sets and broadcasts reaching a public audience from the mid-1930s.

However, in the previous decade, Baird had spotted a more rapid route to market for moving pictures. Inspired by work in Europe and the US, he sought to make a profitable business out of long-forgotten ideas for television.

Those 19th-century ideas could, Baird realised, be adapted into a version of television using spinning discs of lenses that would require minimal investment. He pursued the difficult task of televising conventionally lit scenes that would show the human face in detail and texture.

Whereas an established company would have kept work-in-progress behind closed doors, the perilous state of Baird’s finances suggests he needed to promote his version of television heavily through demonstrations.

But due to the size of his apparatus, demonstrations from early 1926 were largely confined to his laboratories. These demonstrations, he hoped, would allow him to gain publicity and encourage potential investors in his work – while still concealing details of his methods from competitors.

‘An error of judgment’

From late 1925, Baird began promoting via hobbyist press what he retrospectively described as “true television”. He extended an open invitation to members of the Royal Institution to witness this at a demonstration to be held on the evening of January 26, 1926.

Remarkably, none of the attending members published any comment on their experience, suggesting they had not recognised the significance of what they experienced.

The only first-hand report was printed in the Times two days later as a minor event. When E.G. Stewart of the Gas, Light and Coke Company visited Baird in April 1926 (perhaps with a view to investing), he concluded that it would be “an error of judgment” for Baird to place the equipment as presented on the market.

Baird’s television apparatus used at Frith Street was centred on a large spinning disc of lenses, operating as a television camera that generated a vision signal of 30 vertical lines and a transportable display that converted the signal back to an image. The equipment gave a television picture which, from Stewart’s report, appeared as a thin strip of the image sweeping across the display just five times per second.

Of course, 100 years ago, there were no standards for television picture quality, so success depended on the watcher’s subjective experience of seeing something vaguely recognisable. Given the limited detail, 30-line television relied heavily on the uncanny human ability to discern faces and expressions from even the crudest and most distorted of displayed images.

Following a demonstration he attended some months later, Fox wrote that Baird had improved the picture, giving “the first appearance of true detail [where] people recognised one another when they were transmitted”.

This might explain why the attendees at Frith Street had seemed unimpressed, as the demonstration presumably lacked those same recognisable features. At every demonstration, Baird emphasised he was not presenting a finished product but a work-in-progress that required more time, effort and money. Throughout the remainder of 1926, positive reports from influential dignitaries became more frequent, indicating significant progress.

In the following years, Baird’s Frith Street demonstration on January 26, 1926 was retrospectively identified as the watershed moment when television transitioned from being a dream into a period of practical reality. In the process, Baird came to be immortalised – in the UK, at least – as the inventor of television by being first to show faces with detail and texture in reflected light.

From 1927, Baird continued to promote and develop his approach to television, securing recognition for being first in showing television in colour and in receiving images live in New York, sent by radio from London.

This and his experimental Europe-wide 30-line television service from 1929 to 1932 inspired the BBC to pursue a superior service for the public by exploiting new developments in electronics from the Baird Company’s competitor, Marconi-EMI.

The origins of CBS’s 1940s colour TV breakthrough in the US can be traced to Baird’s 1928 system, as can the colour TV method used in the Apollo lunar missions.

Forty years after his death in 1946, Baird was described by Daily Telegraph journalist L. Marsland Gander as “an eccentric visionary with a passion for gadgetry”. Unfortunately, despite his landmark achievements in the history of television, Gander also described Baird as “constantly in financial trouble”.

Donald McLean does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.