Just before you crest the final hill on the road to Hastings, you pass a small sign welcoming you to the ‘Birthplace of Television.’ Considering the almost inestimable power, influence and consequences of the medium, the discreet sign seems somehow inadequate to commemorate such a momentous legacy.
Does Hastings deserve the accolade? In the technical sense, hedged with caveats and restrictions from the pedantic, but probably yes. It was there, in 1924, that John Logie Baird cobbled together a Heath Robinson assembly of biscuit tins and string, and first transmitted a crude, very low resolution blurry shadow, but still visibly moving image from one machine to another.
Reproduction of an early prototype television by Baird. Hastings Museum
A view of the Country Park – where Baird was inspired to invent television.
But we have Baird’s own word that it was in Hastings that he convinced himself that he could build a working television. In his autobiography Baird describes how, at the beginning of his stay in Hastings, he walked over the cliffs to Fairlight Glen. During the walk he thought about his early experiments with television, and how these could be developed further. On his return to Linton Crescent, he announced to his friend and supporter ‘Mephy’, that he had thought of a means of ‘seeing by wireless.’
21 Linton Crescent. Here Baird announced his intention to develop television.
Hastings celebrates Baird’s presence with street names, a permanent exhibition in the town’s museum and a cosmetically re-branded Wetherspoons, but otherwise seems overly modest or indifferent. The site of his workshop in Queens Arcade remains although only a plaque marks the spot. His home on Linton Crescent also has a Blue Plaque.
Blue Plaque at 21 Linton Crescent
But Baird, who originally came, as did so many, for his health, only stayed in Hastings for around 18 months, and seems to have had a difficult time there, and received only a little encouragement from the good burghers. He was evicted from his home in Queens Arcade, which he was using as a workshop, after an explosion caused by a short-circuit damaged the apartment and severely burnt him.
He was frequently laughed at, and treated with suspicion as a crank. In a scene worthy of the slapstick comedies so beloved of the English, a public confrontation with his irate landlord ended when Baird split his trousers, much to the amusement of a crowd in the street.
Queens Arcade – Baird was evicted from his workshop here (and split his trousers in the street.)
I can’t help wondering if among the boys ridiculing Baird was Alan Turing, later to be a code-breaker, mathematician and the Godfather of computing, who was at school in nearby St Leonards at the time. In any case, it seems to have been an unhappy time for Baird and he soon decamped back to London, where he improved his apparatus into a fully working, though still only a crude, proof-of-concept, prototype.
Of course, Baird didn’t invent television either. His basic design was based on a German patent from 1889 and, in the end, his electro-mechanical system was soon replaced by an electronic version.
Another claimant to the appellation ‘Birthplace of Television’ would be Rigby in Idaho, where a young student, Philo Farnsworth, outlined a design for an all-electronic television to his teacher in 1920. But, of course, he didn’t actually build it at the time and we have no way of knowing if he would have succeeded had he tried.
Rigby, Idaho is a little less reticent about its role.
What makes the claim more worthy though, is that Farnsworth later went on to become one of the most important pioneers in the development of what we would today recognise as television, and by 1927 had demonstrated his system, albeit with only a static image. Having said that, Baird also went on to play a major role in the development of British television, The problem for Rigby’s claim though, is that Farnsworth did his work in California, whereas Baird both invented and built his Televisor here in Hastings.
Worth noting is the big difference in the support given to both inventors. Baird struggled to raise £200 and became entangled in endless recriminations with creditors, whereas Farnsworth received $6,000 from philanthropists even before he built a prototype; a disparity many contemporary British engineers would recognise as all too familiar.
An Early Baird Televisor next to a later Baird CRT TV
I can’t help feel that there might be a lesson in Baird’s rather troubled and frustrated life – not everything worth doing is best done by you. Pursuing an idea which requires more input, technical or financial, than you can provide is not always a good thing. He arrived in Hastings having made a fair amount money in trade, which he had mostly lost pursuing inventions and somewhat madcap schemes. He began with a determination “I must invent something.” and had tried glass razor blades (dangerous) and pneumatic boots (unusable and dangerous.) By all accounts, Baird then decided to be the progenitor of television, even though he didn’t really have the skills or means. And although in some ways he succeeded, his system was never a success. He also struggled for years with financial problems and, in the early stages at least, struggled for money and came close to bankruptcy. His determination to be involved in television meant he spent too much of his own money to leave his family well supported.
Baird And Those Perennial TV Favourites – A Pair Of Dummies
Television was an idea whose time had clearly come – it awaited only some technical developments in electronics and sufficient investment of money and expertise to bring it to fruition. As so often in science and technology, the circumstances meant that its introduction was almost inevitable. But Baird was neither in the right place nor the right time, nor even the right person to do so.
Baird eventually retired to nearby Bexhill in 1945, shortly before his death a year later. Alas nothing remains of his last days other than a few building and street names.
However, the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery does have a dedicated permanent exhibition about Baird, including a replica of his early prototype, complete with a dummy head as subject. The exhibition gives a pretty easy to follow explanation for how Baird’s electromechanical system worked. Included are Nipkow Discs which he used to ‘chop’ the image for his selenium sensor and lots of examples of Baird Company product including early TV sets.
Tips
In an irony probably lost on today’s network owners, reception of broadcast television in Hastings remains problematic, with many areas only getting a good service from cable. The same goes for mobile phone coverage.
Gallery and alcove Durbar Hall.
Although not on the Scientific itinerary, it’s worth visiting the museum to see the re-assembled Durbar Hall. These magnificent carved wood rooms were created to a British design in the Punjab, in what is now Pakistan but then was British India, for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition held in South Kensington in 1886. One of the most popular features of the Exhibition was the full-sized reproduction of an Indian Palace, intended to represent a typical Indian royal residence. However, in addition to the original Hall some authentic items (doorways, panels and carvings) have been incorporated into the exhibit.
Durbar Hall Carving Detail