TO his children, he was a thoughtful father absorbed by his work. For the rest of us, he was John Logie Baird, inventor and pioneer of television.
Today (Wednesday) marks the ninetieth anniversary of when the the Scottish scientist made history when he transmitted long-distance television pictures between his London laboratory and apparatus set up on a wash stand in a fourth floor bedroom in the Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow.
And it has now emerged that talks are underway to turn the story of the former University of Glasgow engineering student into a movie.
Baird, born in 1888 in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire, the youngest of four sons of a clergyman took his joy in electronic experimentation to dominated TV innovation for three decades.
Ben Clapp and James Denton in Glasgow receiving the historic images from London in May, 1927.
In 1926, he had given the first public display of television in a Soho room in front of members from the Royal Institution and a sceptical journalist.
But it was the following year that he made the historic long-distance telecast from his company office in London, to what was then known as the Central Hotel.
Experts believed that sentimental considerations dictated Baird's choice of Glasgow as the setting for the greatest trial to which his electronic device had been subjected - having been hailed at the time by the Herald as a brilliant young inventor.
It was in response to US telecoms firm AT&T's attempt to rain on his parade, by setting up their own transmission a month earlier using rotary mechanical equipment, similar to Baird's. Baird, said in his own account of the event that it was made to "revive enthusiasm after the damping effect" of the AT&T demonstrations, saying that the telephone lines use between London and Glasgow were "really good ones, and the transmission as a great success".
Baird's son, Malcolm (below), a retired chemical engineer who now lives in Canada, said: "This American demo considerably upset the shareholders of my father's company because it broke their monopoly of television! So my father set up this demonstration."
One witness to the broadcast, Professor E Taylor Jones, of the University of Glasgow, wrote in an article published in Nature: "The image was perfectly stead in position, was remarkably free from distortion and showed no signs of the streakiness which was, I believe, in evidence in earlier experiments.
"The size of the image was small, not more than about two inches across when the object was a person's face... The images was sufficiently bright to be seen vividly even when the electric light in the room was switched on..."
Radio amateur Ben Clapp, who assisted Baird, owned a short wave transmitter and a few months in February, 1928, Baird sent television from London to New York by radio using Clapp's transmitter.
"This led to banner headlines on both sides of the Atlantic," said Mr Baird. "The major US electronic companies, in particular RCA began to support television research in a big way. The rest is history."
Malcolm Baird and Clapp would go on to unveil a commemorative plaque at the Glasgow hotel in 1988. Mr Baird said he was now helping with the "preparatory stages" of a new film project about his father, after two previous film attempts in 1997 and 2008 came to nothing.
John Logie Baird pictured in 1940 with the latest version of his invention
"Let's hope this will be third time lucky," he said. It is still early days. It is still at the script/treatment stage but progress is being made."
He said of his father: "As a family man, my father was always kind to my sister and me, although preoccupied with his work. And in the five years or so before his death in 1946, he was often ill."
But did his father get enough credit for being the inventor of TV? " The UK has recognised him in many ways, with historic plaques, prizes and lectures named after him. The USA and Canada are beginning to take more notice of him, I'm glad to say. For example the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers inducted him to their Honor Roll in 2014, and last January the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers sponsored an historic plaque at the London site of the first demonstration in 1926."
Baird developed colour TV and brought out the world's first mass-produced television set in 1929 and from then until 1937 the BBC used Baird’s company for its television broadcasts.
The mechanical TV didn’t last much longer, however - it was outstripped by the electronic television in the 1930s. This didn’t deter Baird, who continued to work in television innovation and eventually gave the first demonstration of a fully electronic colour TV in 1944.
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