John Logie Baird in Folkestone: Was It the Birthplace of Television?

A small wooden plaque inside 26 Guildhall Street is about to put Folkestone into an argument with history. On 3 September, local filmmaker Ben Barton will screen Is Folkestone the Birthplace of Television?, a six-minute documentary built around John Logie Baird’s forgotten connection with the town and archive film of his widow unveiling that plaque. A century after Baird’s famous public demonstration, it’s a question worth testing properly.

It’s a cracking story. But is Folkestone really where television was born?

There’s no serious doubt Baird worked here. Folkestone & District Local History Society records that T.C. Gilbert & Co, electrical and radio engineers, occupied 26 Guildhall Street and that Baird experimented in the basement. Alan Taylor’s father, Fred, was an apprentice electrician there and remembered him at work. The society says Baird managed to transmit a flickering image across a few feet and lodged at Flordon House, 10 West Terrace (where McDonalds and Icelands are).

That gets Folkestone onto the map.

It doesn’t, by itself, make the town television’s birthplace.

The strongest detailed Folkestone account comes from P.A. Bennett, a former director of T.C. Gilbert, whose recollections appeared in the Folkestone Herald in February 1961 and were later reproduced in Tom McArthur and Peter Waddell’s Vision Warrior. Bennett said Baird (pictured) was given a workshop bench and use of Western Electric audio-frequency amplifiers. He remembered carbon-filament bulbs, new neon lamps and a coarse-grained image with little definition. Crucially, he put Baird in Folkestone for “perhaps two or three months” — not the six months sometimes claimed.

There’s even a small geographical wrinkle. Vision Warrior refers at one point to the plaque being at 36 Guildhall Street, while the surviving plaque, the local history society and Screen Archive South East all identify 26 Guildhall Street. That looks more like a mistake in the book than evidence of another laboratory, but it’s precisely the sort of detail that warns against turning recollection into certainty.

There’s a bigger correction.

The plaque wasn’t unveiled in 1951, as the account now circulating says. Vision Warrior specifically cites a Folkestone Herald report, “Pioneer of Television Research, Memorial to J.L. Baird”, dated 3 June 1961, and says Baird’s widow unveiled it that summer. Screen Archive South East holds the surviving Southern Television footage of her doing so. On the available evidence, 1961 is the date that stands up.

Then the story starts to wobble.

Vision Warrior argues that the familiar tale — Baird settled in Hastings, had his brainwave and invented television there — is too tidy. Its reconstruction has him working during 1923 not only in Hastings but also Helensburgh, Folkestone, London and Tunbridge Wells. More significantly, it cites a contemporary Helensburgh Times report saying Baird had experimented there before ill health and lack of materials drove him south, after which he had been in Folkestone, Tunbridge Wells and London. Hastings wasn’t even mentioned.

That matters. Baird’s laboratory may not have been one laboratory at all.

But it doesn’t hand victory to Folkestone. Hastings has the stronger dated trail. Victor Mills recalled Baird turning up at his parents’ house in February 1923, saying he was trying to invent television and was already “getting a picture”, although struggling with noise. By January 1924 Baird had television apparatus at his Hastings lodgings. Contemporary newspaper reports from April and July 1924 place his laboratory in Queen’s Arcade and record the spectacular electrical accident there which burned his hands and hurled him across the room.

Folkestone’s dating is murkier. Bennett remembered 1924. McArthur and Waddell thought he’d got that wrong and pushed Baird’s stay back into 1923. Yet their reason — that Baird was in Hastings during 1924 — sits awkwardly beside their own evidence that he moved between several locations. Folkestone’s local historians also settle on 1924. So there’s credible evidence of experimentation here, but no contemporary Folkestone document yet uncovered proving that the decisive first television image happened in Guildhall Street.

And there’s a bigger problem with the whole birthplace contest. Vision Warrior pushes Baird’s experiments further back still, advancing a claim that a crude system worked at Yoker, Glasgow, around 1915, and another that images were transmitted in Trinidad around 1920. The book itself acknowledges that the Yoker evidence is circumstantial, while much of the Trinidad case comes from testimony collected decades afterwards. Interesting? Certainly. Proven? That’s another matter.

Which leaves the awkward question: what does “birth of television” actually mean?

Modern technical histories draw the line later. The IET places Baird’s successful transmission of a recognisable human face on 2 October 1925 at 22 Frith Street, Soho. English Heritage describes that as the first television picture with tone gradation. On 26 January 1926, Baird formally demonstrated his system before about 40 members of the Royal Institution. IEEE’s history goes further, distinguishing his earlier moving silhouettes — including the 1925 Selfridges demonstrations — from the light, shade and detail Baird himself considered “true television”.

So where does that leave Folkestone?

Somewhere considerably more interesting than wishful thinking, but short of a proven birthplace. Baird was here. He experimented here. Witness testimony and technical detail tie him directly to Guildhall Street, and Folkestone clearly belongs in the developmental story of television. What the surviving evidence can’t presently establish is that television happened here first.

The plaque deserves to be seen.

It just shouldn’t be asked to carry more history than the evidence can bear.

The Shepway Vox Team

Deliciously Delightful Dissent