Please excuse me for not knowing how on earth to pronounce your middle and last names. A poverina like me will never have that kind of money to get to anywhere where I can ask a Scot.
I got your name listed on my school text books as the first inventor of television. After reading about the history of camera, which dawned on me as more or less similar to the history of television, I have to disagree on some fine points.
I am a typical woman who is very dumb with machines. I will ( see, I don't write: I shall ) never figure out the components of a television. What I can gather is, there were more than one genius who discovered the different principles and components to transmit live images through wires in a box, at more or less the same time period. However, it was the first guy/s who got the holy grail of $ namely, patent rights who was addressed as "the inventor". I heard that you wouldn't get the patent if the quality of your invention stinks, so I guess you deserve your credit as ONE of the first inventors.
My humble opinion: many people forget that television went through a series of rapid evolution from its most primitive structure to the ultra-sophistication today. Objectively speaking, no single man can claim to be the inventor of television because it was, is and will continue to be the joint effort of several geniuses. That's why more respectable references called you the inventor of mechanical television while Mr Vladimir Kosma Zworykin and Mr Philo T. Farnsworth are considered the pioneers of electronic television.
Schools in my ugly city is fond of putting your surname, Baird in one column with the names of other inventors and television in another column. At times, I was itching to cancel your name and substitute: Smith, Nipkow, Theremin, Ives. Then I was itching even more to argue: the first inventor of WHICH television? Tsh tsh...That would be heresy. Yeap burnt on the stake for looking at the big picture.
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