In Hastings Museum, Professor Malcolm Baird discovers a missing chapter from the autobiography known as ’Sermons Soap and Television’ written by his father John Logie Baird in 1941.

The first draft was written whilst JLB recovered from a near fatal heart attack early in the war, and was recuperating at Tempsford Hall, Bedfordshire. The manuscript for ‘Sermons Socks and Televison’ was eventually published posthumously as ’Sermons Soap and Television’.

Unknown at the time, another chapter for the book was written in 1948 by Malcolm’s mother, Margaret Baird. This is the first time it has been seen.

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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 and this archive includes their only known testimony. Interviewees include: German Television Pioneer - Professor Manfred Von Ardenne, Founder of the Voice of America - Donald Flamm, Personal Assistant to JLB 1933-39 - Paul Reveley, and Physicist Gilbert Tomes who helped JLB deliver The Telechrome as well as the television components for Collosus. Central to the archive is the testimony of Professor Malcolm Baird, the inventors son, filmed at many of the key locations in his fathers story. Including; Helensburgh, Bude, Frith Street, Lord Acre, Crystal Palace, Hastings and Bexhill.

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’ has now been revised and updated by 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....