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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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John Logie Baird
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(1888–1946) Scottish amateur pioneer of television who was ahead of his rivals but whose system was inadequate to survive the competition. On 26 January 1926 he gave the world's first demonstration of television in his attic rooms in Soho; his makeshift apparatus, which scanned the image mechanically and transmitted a picture of 30 lines repeating 10 times per second, is now in London's Science Museum.
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In 1928 he succeeded in transmitting an image of himself (together with a certain Mrs Howe) across the Atlantic to the USA. He formed a company which the BBC employed from 1929 for private experimental broadcasting a few hours a day; the televising of the Derby in 1931 was one of the major successes. But from 1931 EMI was developing a more sophisticated electronic system. When the BBC launched public TV in 1936, the EMI system (405 lines, 50 frames per second) and Baird's (by now up to 240 lines and 25 frames per second) were for a short while in competition, but Baird's was soon dropped.
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