Pioneers and personalities
We take for granted that by pressing few buttons on a telephone we can talk to family friends or business associates not only throughout the UK but around the world as well.
These advances in telecommunications and broadcasting owes much to the brilliant minds and personalities who helped launch the electronic revolution. Pioneers and personalities provides an insight to the people who have helped shape the world of telecommunications as we know it today.
Baekeland
The chemist Leo Baekeland is regarded as the 'father of plastic'. Born in Ghent, Belgium, he moved to New York in 1889. Before becoming involved with...
Bain
Alexander Bain was a Scottish watchmaker who invented the chemical telegraph - forerunner of the fax machine. Bain grew up in humble surroundings,...
Baird
John Logie Baird played a key role in popularising television in Britain. He grew up in Glasgow under the watchful eye of his father, a...
Baird and Zworykin
Vladimir Zworykin and John Logie Baird are usually cited as the fathers of TV - but both in the end were unsuccessful, because they missed vital...
Bardeen
John Bardeen was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1956, jointly with Walter Brattain and William Shockley, for research into semiconductors and...
Baudot
Emile Baudot invented a new telegraph code, machine, and printer to allow more than one message to be sent on a single wire at the same time....
Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was born on 3 March 1847. He was born in Scotland, but moved to America as an adult. He is known as the inventor of the...
Bell and Hubbard
Alexander Graham Bell went to the United States as a teacher, rather than as an inventor. His lectures in teaching the deaf won him many friends -...
Berners-Lee
Berners-Lee is the creator of the World Wide Web, the information platform of the Internet. He worked briefly at CERN, the Swiss research...
Brattain
Walter Brattain was one of the trio of scientists who created the transistor, for which he won a Nobel prize in 1956. Brattain was born in China,...
Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was one of the 19th century's greatest engineers. Brunel was the son of a French inventor, and invention was in his blood...
