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The Logie Baird Lecture (practical demonstration illustrated)
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" John Logie Baird (1888-1946) was the Scottish scientist who invented television and the reason why we regard television as the result of British ingenuity. In fact Baird was a hungarian refugee - Lunz Vavasor - who was briefly employed by the Marconi brothers at their Italian research laboratories in Brindisi; the year was 1921.
It wasn't long before Vavasor's incompetence was detected and he was dismissed, but by this time he had already stolen enough technical data from the Marconi's to crudely demonstrate the principal of television to the world; but how could this be done without recrimination? The Marconis had strong Mafia connections and would undoubtedly put a contract out on Vavasor when they realised what had happened. Vavasor had to change his identity and hope that the brothers would take it to be an unfortunate coincidence when another scientist, pursuing similar ideas, beat them to it; he decided to visit his half sister in Scotland.
Krysha had opened Scotland's first bistro with her husband in a fashionable suburb of Edinburgh. The business was a success, and between it and raising a young family, she gave her brother little thought. When Lunz arrived and told Krisha of his plans a new identity was soon arranged, including marriage to one of the bistro's waitresses and the wearing of a kilt - his Kaposvar accent soon being adapted into the gutteral stutterings of a Kinross scientist.
On June 7th 1926 John Logie Baird (the Logie was a printers error for his ironic nickname 'Logic' which he was never to shake off) demonstrated the first television system. Through holes in a piece of spinning plywood light shone onto a photo-electric cell causing a bulb to vary in brightness. The viewer saw a feint, fuzzy image through holes in another spinning disk.
The system was soon replaced by a higher quality fully electronic system marketed under the Marconi name. Baird's system was exposed as the work of Paul Nipkow (1860-1940) who showed it working in 1884.
The subsequent shame caused his sister to disown him, and after fourteen years he died a penniless alcoholic; his body was found slumpedin the toilets of a Dumfries winebar - a bullethole at the base of his skull."