THE FIRST TELEVISION G1sr05

 5. THE FIRST TELEVISION

John Baird lived in Scotland. As a boy he was always making things, and most of them were electric. When he was older, he went to college to study more about electricity. Radios had just been invented then, and people were talking about sending pictures by electricity. John Baird began to think about this. He worked so hard at it that he got ill. But he made up his mind to go on working at the wireless pictures until he had found out how to send them.

He made his first set in an old box. He found a toy electric motor in a junk heap behind a shop. He fixed it and used it in his set. He also bought a cheap lamp to help him. Besides this, he used part of an old army wireless set, and some bits of wood. All these he fixed together with glue, string, wax, and many wires.

After many months of hard work, he managed to send a picture of a cross over a distance of three yards. It was not a clear picture, but he could not do any better, for he was running out of money. He had to take his machine to a shop and show the picture to people. In return, the shop owner paid him £25 a week. He stayed in the shop for a few weeks, then left to work at his set again. But the money was soon spent, so he often had to go hungry. His clothes needed mending and his shoes needed repairing. He became ill again, but still he worked at his idea. He was so poor by now that he even had to sell some parts of his set so as to have money to buy some food. That meant, of course, he could not work without those parts.

But then his luck changed. Some friends sent him some money and he soon bought back the parts he had sold. With these to help him he tried to send a picture of a face—not a real face, but the face of a doll he had. The picture only came out like a white circle with three black spots showing for the mouth and eyes.

He now bought some new parts for his set with more of the money his friends had given him. He put these parts into the set and switched it on. He had a great surprise! It now showed the doll's face clearly—nose, mouth, eyes, ears, and hair! John was so delighted that he wanted to find someone whose face could be shown. He ran downstairs to an office just below his room. He found the office boy there, and quickly dragged him upstairs.

The boy must have thought John was mad, but John did not care. He made the boy sit down in place of the doll, facing the strong lights and noisy machinery. Then he shouted to him, "Don't move!" and went off into the room where the picture would be shown. He looked at the screen. Alas! There was no face showing! What had happened? John rushed back into the room, and saw what was wrong. The boy was afraid and had bent his head back from the lights and noise. John made the boy sit still, promising that nothing would hurt him. A few seconds later he was looking at the screen again with the machinery turned on. This time, to his delight, he saw the boy's face! It was quite clear—just as clear as the doll's had been. He called the boy to the screen, and he himself went and sat in the doll's seat. To the boy's surprise, he saw John's face on the screen.

So John Baird had really managed to do it. He had found a way to send pictures by wireless. That was in the year 1925, and it was the beginning of television.