John Logie Baird

[P3D Keith Wilson <100303.2573@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom Johnstone asks whether anyone can provide information on John Logie Baird's
work with stereoscopic television.  I can help a little. 

 According to a booklet recently published by Ray Herbert, one of the few
surviving members of Baird's team, Baird first demonstrated stereo TV in 1928 as
a digression from his work on 30-line mechanical TV systems.  He decided that
the work showed little commercial potential, and did nothing more stereo until
1941.

In that year, he demonstrated full-colour stereo TV with a definition of 500
lines using some kind of alternate frame system.  The booklet says that a
shutter (mechanical I assume) was used to provide left- and right-eye views in
rapid sequence.  No glasses were needed, but the viewer had to be in a fixed
position to see the stereo effect.  The demonstration took place on 18th
December 1941.

A photograph exists, in the form of a stereo pair, of the received image.  The
subject is a model head, so I presume that the left and right images were
photographed separately - I can't imagine how it could have been done from the
composite alternate frame picture.

I suspect that war-time conditions made it impossible for Baird to develop or
market the system, and he died in 1946, shortly after the war ended.  Though
I've been interested in the history of TV for many years, I've never heard that
anyone took up Baird's work.

If anybody is interested in further information, please e-mail me privately, and
I'll see what I can find.


Keith Wilson
Haddenham, not too far from Oxford and London, in the UK


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