History of Sorts

I remember one of my sons , when he was a toddler, asking when the world turned color. I had to laugh at the innocent question, for he thought that prior to color movies and TV, the world had been black and white.

To answer his question, well at least from a TV perspective, it was in September 1941, 2 years into WWII.

The Scottish engineer, innovator,and one of the inventors of the mechanical television,John Logie Baird, had been working to produce a two-color image.

He did this by by placing filters in front of  two tubes and  then project them onto a smaller screen to enhance the effective intensity.The subject he used to demonstrate his invention had had a very colorful life herself.

Paddy Naismith had been a race driver,chauffeur to Prime Minister Mr Ramsay Macdonald, air hostess and actress. In September 1941 John Logie Baird used a live image of Paddy Naismith used…