The JLB Digital Archive - The unknown secret war work at Baird Television

In this remarkable testimony, physicist and scientist Gilbert Tomes describes events at Baird Television following the disastrous fire at Crystal Palace in 1936. Under the leadership of Captain ADG West, Technical Director at Baird Television, the company rebuilt its operations around the Rotunda and at another facility at Lower Sydenham, South London. JL Baird remained close at hand with his personal laboratory at Crescent Wood Road where he worked primarily with one assistant.

With the London visit in 1936 of the American television pioneer Philo Farnsworth, the company began to produce the largest television tubes available and attempted to improve the poor light sensitivity of the electronic Farnsworth camera and turn it into a viable device.

The arrival at the Crystal Palace Rotunda in 1938 of an unexpected German visitor from Fernseh AG, would lead to a discovery that would change the course of the history of television technology. In what was essentially a spying and intelligence mission, Dr Heimann of Fernseh AG ( under the direct control of the National Socialists ) was given the task of finding out if Baird Television had recovered after the fire at Crystal Palace. In the mistaken expectation that details of technical developments would be forthcoming, Dr Heimann revealed that the Germans had been experimenting with Antimony and Caesium in pursuit of improved light sensitivity. He got nothing in return for this disclosure and left empty-handed.

After Heimann’s departure, this information immediately led to a series of experiments with antimony and caesium by Dr Alfred Sommer, one of the lead physicists at Baird Television. Within weeks Sommer who had fled the German persecution of Jewish scientists with the personal help of JL Baird, had found a way to massively increase the light sensitivity of the new surfaces he was preparing at the Rotunda. These improvements would prove critical to the military development of proximity fuse rockets and anti aircraft ordnance for the allies. It also led directly to the development of the Telechrome, the worlds first all electronic colour television system by JL Baird.

Alfred Sommer would remain with Baird until the inventors death in 1946. For his work on the ‘Shadowmask’ for RCA /EMI and on the “Trinitron’ system for SONY, Alfred Sommer was hailed as ‘the father of photoelectricity’ in Japan.

During WWII the top secret Baird Television facility at the Rotunda in the grounds of Crystal Palace would be guarded by the British Army and forces of the Free French Army. They produced more Skiatron and Radar related cathode ray tubes than any other facility in Britain, and contributed to the components used to build Colossus designed by Alan Turing. Many of the secret projects undertaken at Baird Television and by JL Baird himself were undertaken with the tacit support of Professor Frederick Lindemann, Chief Scientific Officer appointed by Winston Churchill.

Under Capt West the facility also constructed the mine detectors that were used by the 7th Armoured Division MEF ahead of the battle of El Alamein famously delivering the first major allied victory of the war.

In early 1946, JL Baird was invited by British Intelligence to take part in the interrogation of the now captured Dr Heimann. The invitation was declined due to Baird’s declining health.


In fond memory of Gilbert Tomes 1913 - 2008
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup...
https://www.bairdtelevision.com/gilbe...


About the JLB Digital Archive

Between 1994 and 2002, over 30 hours of historic eyewitness interviews were filmed for the documentaries ‘Tv is King’ [ Royal Television Society Award] and the widely praised ’JLB The Man Who Saw the Future’.Most of those interviewed either knew or worked closely with JLB. Few had previously been interviewed previously and this archive includes their only known testimony.

As funds allow, it is the intention to make all of this historic material publicly available for the first time ahead of the Centenary of Television which falls in October 1925, and marks John Logie Baird’s laboratory breakthrough with television in Frith Street, London.

Do please subscribe if you would like to know when further footage is added to The JLB Digital Archive.


‘Sermons Soap and Television’ the autobiography of John Logie Baird has now been revised and updated by his son Malcolm Baird and is available from Birlinn Books as ’Television and Me’: https://birlinn.co.uk/product/televis...

To find out more about events to mark 100 years of Television, please visit:https://www.bairdtelevision.com/main....