What makes television? 100 years of tumultuous change

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A while back at the Mayo Clinic, they tested the impact of nature sounds and soft music on heart surgery patients. And by day two post-op, the pain and anxiety levels of the nature sound patients was significantly lower.
So if life is poking you in the heart right now, why not bathe in the sound of nature? It won't cure your eels, but it will make you feel better about them. Nature Sounds by Anne Jones, wherever you get your podcasts and on the ABC Listen app.

**Natasha Mitchell** (0:39)
Hey, the Top 100 Books is back soon on ABC Radio National. This year, we're asking you to vote for the Top 100 Australian Books of all time. Voting kicks off later this month, but Victorian listeners, you can join me at a special Top 100 Books event in Carlton, Melbourne on September the 1st, with children's book aficionados, including Australian children's laureate Andy Griffiths. We're going to be talking their faves, whether kids books have become too didactic, too moralistic. What do kids want to read? Is it the same as what adults want to read? To book a seat, head to the Big Ideas homepage and look for B in our audience at the bottom.
Well, it's 100 years since the Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, first demonstrated a TV broadcast signal. That's a familiar name. He's often credited as the inventor of television. But did you know that his original creation was a failure in its day?

**Jock Given** (1:39)
John Logie Baird's television system did not attract many viewers. BBC's chief engineer was scathing, as BBC engineers want to be, about his approach. He thought the Baird apparatus does not only not deserve a public trial, but has reached the limit of its development owing to the basic technical limitations of the method employed.
One of the BBC staff working with both systems said, working in the Baird studio was like using Morse code when you knew that next door you could use the telephone.

**Natasha Mitchell** (2:10)
Hello, welcome to ABC Radio National's Big Ideas with me, Natasha Mitchell. And as the Australian TV industry prepares to mark its night of nights, the Logies this weekend. Today we're celebrating 100 years of Tally, the idiot box, or as the disposable heroes of hypocrisy described it, the drug of the nation. Whatever we call it, the small screen has brought domesticated joy to generations. And you're joining a symposium at RMIT University in Nga, Melbourne with invited scholars and industry heavyweights on the past and future of broadcast television in Australia.
In a moment, we'll bring you a keynote address from Swinburne University's Adjunct Professor of Media and Communications, Jock Given, covering the incredible tumultuous changes endured by television over its lifetime. But first up, to set the scene, let's hear from RMIT Lecturer in Public Relations, Dr. Damien O'Meara and Lecturer in Digital Communications, Dr. Alexa Scarlata.

**Damien O'Meara** (3:15)
This year marks 100 years since John Lokey-Baird's first public demonstration of a true television broadcast signal. In January 1926, the Scottish inventor invited 40 members of the Royal Institution, one of UK's most influential science research and education charities, to his Soho Attic Laboratory to examine a machine he'd assembled from everyday items, a tea chest, bicycle lights, darning needles and scissors. It used spinning disks to transmit recognizable flickering moving images of faces. That of a dummy, Stookie Bill, followed by a 20-year-old office boy, William Tainton, with light and shade. Baird called it a televisor.
While some observers were initially underwhelmed by the quality of the transmission, and skeptical of its utility, the Times reported that the apparatus marked a breakthrough in the ability to transmit moving shaded images. This has been identified as the watershed moment when television transitioned from being a dream into a period of practical reality.

**Alexa Scarlata** (4:25)
So over the next 10 years, a television industry formed in the UK.
The BBC was established in 1927, and Baird led on the work to test the frequency from 1929 It took until 1936 before the BBC Television Service began their first regular television service in the world, and only for it to cease in 1939 due to the war. Meanwhile, the US was also undertaking tests and public demonstrations through the 1920s and 1930s. And by the 1940s, the UK had resumed regular television, and the US commercial television industry was established. As most of us here know, Australia was a late comer, comparatively, to broadcast television, and arrived here in 1956 in the most Aussie way possible, just in time to watch the Olympics in 1956 It was the first Olympics outside of Europe and the US. And we've been gathering to watch sport on TV ever since.