About
Starting in 1982, I discovered and restored all the known experimental disc recordings of John Logie Baird’s low definition mechanically-scanned video made between September 1927 and March 1928. Between 1996 and 1998, I restored several home video recordings of the BBC’s first Television Service on 30-lines broadcast between 1932 and 1935.
Back in the 1920s, Baird patented a few inventions relating to recording television. He could not perfect his recording method (which he called ‘Phonovision’) for reliable playback and consequently never demonstrated playback of pictures from these discs. I feel truly honoured to be able to reveal what Baird had recorded and what Baird was trying to achieve with Phonovision. But the discs reveal more than just the images. Within the distorted signal on the discs is a wealth of information which gives us an amazing insight into how these recordings were made and the difficulties Baird encountered in his studio.