100 Voices that made the BBC – The Birth of TV

[Mike Watterson]

Yet another "history" implying that the most significant precursor to modern television was Baird's activities with no mention of the A.A. Campbell-Swinton who conceived modern television decades before it actually arrived.

Peter

I don't disagree that Baird and Mosley did a good job in exciting public interest but it surprises me that in a technical forum there isn't more uproar at the shear unfairness of allowing the publicists to get all the praise why ignoring the true enablers.

Peter

Hear Hear.
There is a similar phenomenon in USA with Philo Farnsworth, who didn't deserve the patent payout from RCA, nor does he deserve being called "father of TV". He was one of many early innovators, yet the USA lauds him more than all the others. He did demonstrate a working system, but so did others and it was a technological dead-end, for 525 lines the concept would be nearly 10,000 times less sensitive than the 1940s camera tubes, inherently.

Edison is a similar phenomenon. Yet he didn't really invent Cinema or Light bulbs. His battle with Tesla over Electric power was crazy. His phonograph was a dead end (problem of cylinder production via moulding and joining two halves) only useful as a dictaphone, compared to gramophone disc (pressings are easy). CDs, DVDs and BD are still pressed, though have smooth grooves for the laser tracking and pits rather than wavy walls, then coated. Re-writeable ones have the pressed grooves but rely on dye to replace the pits and lands. Actually it's a single groove.

Marconi, OTH never claimed to have invented radio and didn't feel he deserved a Nobel Prize. He knew and admitted he was a successful entrepreneur that relied on hiring engineers and scientists. Interestedly one of the few technical / entrepreneurs that Edison didn't attack, because as he said to Marconi, he had no wireless interests!  I have great bio book on Marconi which I seem to have misplaced. The Ladybird "The Story of Radio" seems quite good and accurate too!
Unlike Farnsworth and Baird, the more modest and honest Marconi, really did advance the use and development of Wireless. His single important breakthrough to success, he said himself was realising the advantage of an aerially supported wire and an earthed connection instead of a small loop for transmission and reception. He told William Preece, that otherwise his equipment was all standard. Later Marconi developed the 1/4 wave whip and the parabolic reflector.