John Logie Baird

Queen Elizabeth II - Accession, Coronation and Television

by Malcolm Baird

THE sad event of 8 September 2022 has set me thinking back to the Queen’s Accession on 6 February 1952.

At this time I was a 17 year old pupil at Fettes College in Edinburgh, keenly studying chemistry and physics while trying to avoid serious injury on the rugby field.

Classes were interrupted by an urgent message from the Headmaster summoning the school to a parade in front of the main building. As we assembled, the whisper went round that King George VI was dead. This came as a shock, because the press and the radio had declared that the King’s health was stable after his lung operation a few months earlier.
Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh had flown out on an African tour, from which they had to return hurriedly upon hearing the news of the King’s death. At the Fettes parade, the Headmaster formally broke the news and called for a minute of silence.

When Baird met H.G.Wells

H.G.Wells and J.L.Baird

Notes from Malcolm Baird, January 2021

THIS year the Royal Mint is issuing coins to mark the 75th anniversaries of the deaths of two highly creative British figures, one in literature and the other in science and technology.

Baird’s trip to Trinidad in 1919

A research note by Malcolm Baird, July 8 2019, amended March 6 2021

I have been re-examining the colourful story of John Logie Baird’s jam factory in Trinidad in 1919-1920. It has appeared in his own memoirs [1] and in later biographies [2,3].

Baird and Buchanan: lifelong friends

Buchanan Baird-w CELEBRATIONS marking the 90th anniversary in October 2015 of Helensburgh inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitting the first ever grey-scale television image would have delighted a famous old friend.

The great entertainer Jack Buchanan, who was born in the burgh on April 2 1890, was a lifelong supporter of the TV inventor and invested in the new medium.

Baird on Baird

Among John Logie Baird’s old papers are some pages from a magazine called “Scotland” in its 1936 summer edition. He was asked for recollections of his earlier life and he recalled school and social life in Helensburgh, with a few comments on politics as the world drifted towards World War Two.

Talks with Great Scots 1. – J.L.Baird

(Of his Youth and the Northern Character)

“I remember, I remember, the place where I was born ...”

Baird Memorial Address June 26 1946

rev-robert-scott-w THIS Memorial Address was delivered to the London Memorial Service for John Logie Baird by The Rev. Robert F.V.Scott, D.D., Minister of St. Columba’s Church of Scotland, Pont Street, London.

Son of Manse — Inventor of Television

1929 Baird-pic-w "MY earliest memory of him dates back to 1938 in the garden at our house in Sydenham, South-East London.

"He was muffled in an overcoat and scarf— he always felt the cold."

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