By Professor Malcolm Baird, President of Helensburgh Heritage Trust
WE are sometimes told that television has taken the place of print. I would like to explore this idea.
John Logie Baird
From 30 lines to 240 lines with J.L.Baird
This article is the text of a talk given by Andy Andrews to Bliss Probus Club in February 2011, at the Chequers Public House, Goddard Lane, in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. Andy was 99 in August 2011 and is still going strong. His original handwritten manuscript was transcribed by Kenneth Crawford in March 2012.
John Logie Baird was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, in 1888 and died in June 1946. He was Superintendent of Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company until the end of the First World War. In 1920, because of very poor health, he went to Trinidad and opened a jam factory.
National Trust eyes Baird's birthplace
AN interview in June 2011 about a radical overhaul of the National Trust for Scotland raised a few eyebrows in Helensburgh.
The Scotsman interviewed Trust chairman Sir Kenneth Calman, who said that the Trust must become more commercially minded, intervene to save threatened historic sites, and generate more cash from its existing assets.
Baird relatives return for TV switchover
TWO descendants of Helensburgh-born TV inventor John Logie Baird returned to the burgh on Wednesday April 27 2011 to publicise the digital TV switchover.
The inventor’s daughter, Uddingston-based Mrs Diana Richardson, and grandson Iain Logie Baird from Bradford were joined at the John Logie Baird pub in James Street by another relative, Diana’s cousin Laura Baird Conley — whose home is in the town’s Baird Avenue.
BBC TV Scotland and STV first shows
Professor Malcolm Baird, son of TV inventor John Logie Baird and president of Helensburgh Heritage Trust, remembers the first broadcast.
BBC TV Scotland opened in a wave of optimism on Friday March 14 1952, just a few weeks after the Queen’s accession.
Baird slideshow on BBC website
A NEW audio slideshow about Helensburgh-born TV inventor John Logie Baird can be viewed on the BBC Scotland website.
Entitled ‘Thinking outside the box’ it is the work of a freelance producer, Gill Davies, who is now Glasgow-based but is originally from Helensburgh.
John Logie Baird — by his daughter
In this article, based on a talk she gave to the University of Strathclyde alumni group known as 'The Tech Club' on April 19 2006 and specially adapted in 2011 for the Helensburgh Heritage Trust website, Mrs Diana Richardson, daughter of TV pioneer John Logie Baird, recalled her father's life and work.
IN 1946 John Logie Baird died in his sleep at our rented house in Bexhill-on-Sea. He was only 57 and he died at the wrong time: the war was over and things were starting to return to normal.