Baird, John L

Baird, John L(ogie)

(born Aug. 13, 1888, Helensburgh, Dunbarton, Scot.—died June 14, 1946, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, Eng.) Scottish engineer. Plagued by ill health, he gave up his job as an electric-power engineer in 1922 and devoted himself to television research. He produced televised objects in outline in 1924 and recognizable human faces in 1925, and in 1926 became the first person to televise pictures of objects in motion. He demonstrated colour television in 1928. The German post office gave him facilities to develop a television service in 1929. When the BBC television service began (1936), his system competed with that of Marconi Electric and Musical Industries; the BBC adopted the latter exclusively in 1937. Baird was reported to have completed research on stereoscopic television at the time of his death.