The Falkirk Televisor

I took Sophia along to Falkirk’s Callendar Park on Saturday so that she could play in the park there. Unfortunately, by the time we got there it was raining – heavily. Rather than waste the trip I suggested that we look around the museum in Callendar House. Some of the exhibits, regarding the history of Falkirk, rarely change although are still of interest. They do have a couple of exhibition rooms that change their displays every few months and the current theme was “Everyday Science”. One of the exhibits was of great interest to me as I had heard of it but never actually seen it before: the Falkirk Televisor.

The Falkirk Televisor is, in effect, the oldest known existing prototype of a television camera. It was an electo-mechanical device but it’s principle of scanning images to transmit as an electrical stream was the basis of all video cameras up to the advent of digital broadcasting. The reasons for it ending up in Falkirk are a little more vague but relate to the work of its inventor, John Logie Baird, and the owner of a Falkirk radio supplies shop, John Hart. Baird presented Hart with the Televisor shortly after he had demonstrated television broadcasting in London’s Soho in January 1926. There is a plaque on the device to confirm this.

Hart displayed the Televisor in his shop window before it was eventually passed on to Falkirk Museum. The shop is long gone although a blue plaque on the wall of Falkirk’s Howgate shopping centre marks the site. By pure coincidence, I once bought a Baird branded TV from the Radio Rentals shop that used to be located about 10 metres away in the shopping centre.

What appears to be more surrounded in mystery is what, exactly, the relationship was between Baird and Hart. Given the secretive nature of inventors there are very few records of what went on but as Hart was an experienced electrical engineer and in regular contact with the local Radio Club (who knew Baird) so it would seem natural that they would work together. There is an account from a George Shaw of Larbert that Baird tested his equipment at the Temperance Café in December 1925. This would presumably be a test run for his London demonstration but the only records of this appear to be aural tradition. The Temperance Café, on Lint Riggs, is now called Johnston’s Bar Bistro (and also now sells alcohol!)

It seems unlikely that any more information from Baird’s early research will be found but it does seem likely that such a world-altering invention has its roots close to home.