HISTORY
Road. Squire was also on the team who worked on a big screen television system for London’s Dominion Theatre in December 1936. This mechanical system was a permanent installation and projected a picture of roughly 8 feet by 6¼ feet. During the early years of World War II, Squire was one of Baird’s volunteer helpers, along with Richard Head and Geoffrey Bernard, who was waiting to be called up. There is a single mention of Squire in one of Baird’s 1940 diaries. Will Day was delighted by this ability of Baird’s work to generate income and he planned that the Selfridges demonstrations were to be followed by a similar run at Whiteley’s, a large department store in Bayswater. Day wrote to Baird on 4 April, ‘I have been expecting a visit from you regarding the settlement of Whiteley’s, and to know what has been done with the prospect to forming a projected company. I sent a large number of friends to Whiteley’s from here, so that something should certainly transpire.’ This did not transpire. Baird later recalled: ‘The strain of giving three shows a day on this rickety apparatus was too much for me and I was ill for several weeks after it. The apparatus went back to Frith Street and with a little more money to go on with, the research continued’. Day took it upon himself to dun Selfridges for the money due to Baird for the demonstrations, half of which he seemed to feel was owed to him. Baird was eventually allowed to keep the proceeds. A Tradition of Television at Selfridges The second collaboration of Selfridges and Baird happened in early 1928. At a lunch on the 20th of February to celebrate the opening of a television department at Selfridges, Baird announced that basic kits would be on sale. These kits would enable a wireless amateur enthusiast to build a rudimentary televisor, which could then be upgraded to receive transmissions on a wavelength of 45 metres. Also at this time, Selfridges installed their first window display of television featuring the kit, entitled ‘The Simple Televisor’ and described in the first issue of Television magazine (March), the ‘official organ of the Television Society’, with a second model described in the May 1928 issue. The Simple Televisor was not so much a kit of parts as a set of instructions, requiring the technically-inclined amateur to purchase, seek out or fabricate all of the necessary components separately,
including a selenium cell, a neon bulb, an electric motor, and Meccano parts, provided they agreed to apply for a television constructor’s sub-licence available for a small fee from the Baird Company. A full-size blueprint of the discs was also available for a small fee. For the first model, the pictures were transmitted and received on opposing sides of the same main disc, which was punched with two spiral sets of holes. Television magazine stated: ‘There would seem to be no outstanding reason why the ordinary amateur should not build for himself a similar device and enjoy the unparalleled pleasure of exploring for himself this new branch of science. There is always something infinitely fascinating in exploring a completely novel field, and we propose to give in this article constructional details which will enable the amateur to build for himself a simple machine which will show the transmission of outlines in a crude form.’ With the introduction of the second model, which enabled television to be sent to a separate receiver in another room, the resourceful amateur could follow in the footsteps of Baird’s experiments conducted only three years earlier. By October of that year, the Baird Model A and Model B televisors were for sale at the store, for £20 and £40 respectively. These expensive ready-made sets, manufactured in small numbers by the Baird Company at its Long Acre premises, had the lens, lamp, disc and motor enclosed in a sturdy wooden cabinet, ready for connection to a fairly standard wireless set, and thus were aimed at a less technically-minded customer, one more interested in viewing television programmes. Unfortunately, broadcasts (using Baird’s 30-line system) did not finally begin until September 1929 after a great deal of difficult negotiation with the BBC for the use of its radio transmitter. Six months later, a second transmitter was added, so that vision and sound could be broadcast simultaneously. In 1930, the first BBC-produced television play, Pirandello’s The Man with the Flower in his Mouth, was received at Selfridges, where one of Baird’s employees, Philip Hobson, set up and tested in the morning two of the latest ‘tin stove’-type Plessey- built televisors for the public, and one for Gordon Selfridge himself in a separate room.48 Two different kits based on the Plessey design were also offered around this time. A limitation on television had been the use of radio transmitters designed for sound transmissions, which did not have enough
provided an artificial wall had been erected. It was about a foot thick with the transmitter on one side of it, and the receiving apparatus on the other. There were accumulators,arc lamps, switches, H.T. batteries, Ford coils, P.O. relays, neon tubes, chokes two or three dozen L.F. transformers, a big biscuit tin (Rich Mixed), and several small electric motors which bore a strong family resemblance to electric fans, from which the blades had been detached. Evidently, financial difficulties had not deterred the inventor, and when his resources were low his resourcefulness was unbounded. A breakthrough that was debuted at Selfridges was the use of a neon tube as the light source for the received pictures instead of the filament lamps that he had been using previously. The use of neon was noted by Bird, in the account in the journal Nature, with its debut later highlighted by Burns. Neon lamps’ quicker response to the variations of the television signal meant a significant improvement to the pictures. Bird continues: ‘“How does it work,” I asked Mr Baird, when he was able to disengage himself from some interested old ladies, one of whom had incautiously touched the wiring, and almost succeeded in connecting 3,000 volts across herself. ... “It’s a long story,” he said’. The article goes on to describe the system for the interested layman. ‘Then by way of demonstration, Baird produced the paper mask. … “I’ll make it wink,” shouted the inventor, covering and uncovering one of its eyes. The uncanny, flickering image at my end promptly winked at me in unison, shutting and opening one eye in the most flagrant and uncommonly knowing fashion.’ It has recently been discovered that one of the people who seems to have assisted JLB was Samuel John Squire (1867–1947). He had left the Merchant Navy to become an optical glass worker and developed a fascination with radio which would lead him to working with Baird for what now seems to have been over seventeen years. His granddaughter and the authors believe that he is the older man standing behind JLB in the iconic photograph of the Selfridges demonstrations (see top right opposite). This indicates that Squire’s acquaintance with Baird goes back eight years earlier than previously recorded. Starting in 1933, Squire officially joined Baird Television Limited and also assisted Baird in his research laboratory at 3 Crescent Wood
36
SEPTEMBER 2025 Volume 47 No.3
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker