Stookie Bill

December 28, 2021 11:50 AM

(Television pioneer John Logie) Baird originally planned to broadcast a human, but the system he threw together was so primitive he couldn't do it. His 1925 equipment wasn't sensitive enough to pick up the contrasts of a human face, so a person appeared as a blob. When he saw this, he rolled with the punch by getting a ventriloquist's dummy that was painted so that the features stood out even with a blurry low-contrast camera system. That's how Stookie Bill became the first TV star.

The Stookie (sometimes Stooky) Bill dummy can be seen at more clearly on the Science Museum Group (UK) website.
Of course there's a Wikipedia page but Stooky Bill is one of the few non-living things to be credited as 'Self' on IMDB

If you're interested in John Logie Baird there are many articles and links here for your rabbit hole falling needs.

posted by Clinging to the Wreckage (24 comments total)

Oh no way. No way is that original. It's too prescient, also, and haunting. Stooky Bill looks like a modified Punch doll, and about as lovable.

Mechanical television is so fascinating to me. The image is so faint and small that it seems as if the spinning disk system might have been invented to amuse some ancient tyrant and promptly forgotten for centuries.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:16 PM on December 28, 2021 [7 favorites]

Baird, the human eyeball, spinning.
posted by clew at 12:43 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Never heard of this, thanks for the post!
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:43 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

This Candle Cove nonsense is getting out of hand
posted by FatherDagon at 1:01 PM on December 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

Sweet merciful crap! Well, it is fun to have something new to haunt my most terrifying nightmares.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:04 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Wait, Candle Cove? You remember that show? Nobody else in my family does! Gods, I can't believe they showed that to children. That parrot always said the most horrible things to poor Janice, and that wasn't even the worst part.
posted by Jacen at 1:57 PM on December 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

Candle Cove? Wasn't that always on opposite Ducktales? Yeah, I never saw it.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:14 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

That Mitchell and Webb Look - First Television Broadcast
posted by BungaDunga at 2:23 PM on December 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

They soon learned to compensate with some pretty wild high-contrast makeup.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:55 PM on December 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

1. Interesting note: A "stookie" is Scots for a plaster cast, like you get when you break your arm, so presumably Stookie Bill's name comes from the fact he was made from plaster.
2. How is this not an excerpt from a Doctor Who episode? Not only is it insanely creepy, Like Countess Elena said, the dialogue is so on the nose... I guess it's all too easy to look back and assume an innocence and naivety on the part of inventors: To assume they had no idea what their creation would grow to be. But it's probably kind of patronising to suppose that JLB wasn't aware of just how much his invention was likely to change the world, and how people would respond to it.

But the fact that he basically seems to predict reality TV is still a little disconcerting!
posted by penguin pie at 3:56 PM on December 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

> How is this not an excerpt from a Doctor Who episode? Not only is it insanely creepy, Like Countess Elena said, the dialogue is so on the nose...

That's because it's a recreation. The 1925 broadcast wasn't recorded for posterity, and it was silent. The first TV transmission with audio happened two years later.
posted by ardgedee at 4:14 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

you have all been trolled

(doesn't anyone who reads wikipedia follow the links at the bottom?)

good thing because that was creepy as hell
posted by pyramid termite at 4:54 PM on December 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

Thank you! I knew it could not be real but didn’t look in quite the right place
posted by Countess Elena at 5:07 PM on December 28, 2021

Baird, his concept and the (original) model were real. Just that some of the reporting in the article is based on fiction.

Baird was a tragic figure. A technical genius, but had an amazing way of alienating backers and supporters so he'd get cut off at just the wrong time. He'd become obsessed with a new idea - be it early fibre optics using polished metal tubes as the fibre, or medicated socks for Army use, or a brand new improved way of making jam - and drop his almost commercial project for this new impractical flight of fancy.

He ran through his family's money like water, and he died penniless. My great grandfather, an engineering professor at the Royal Technical College (now Strathclyde University), put together a fund to support Baird's wife and children. Baird had done his early research at the RTC, and my great grandfather got to know him and his family. There's still a plaque dedicated to JLB in the university.

So, being Scottish, naturally this is the first television and that later electronic stuff can go whistle.
posted by scruss at 5:58 PM on December 28, 2021 [14 favorites]

Well damn. I was either trolling or trolled myself but I don't really understand what the link to the Channel 4 thing is about in that regard. In fact I wanted to include it but couldn't find the full video available anywhere and figured the part in the article would have to do. I'm confused but sorry if I trolled anyone.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 6:00 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Should've previewed - Now I'm curious what parts of the reporting were based on fiction. I've read a Barid biography and I'm missing it.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 6:05 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

you have all been trolled

That does make a lot more sense.
posted by penguin pie at 4:30 AM on December 29, 2021

I think that the steemit.com article linked in the FPP is probably pretty accurate, but -- unfortunately! -- that article linked misleadingly to the David Hall/Channel 4 art piece recreation of Stooky Bill's first broadcast, without the disclaimer that it was just a recreation.

You can see Stooky Bill (briefly!) in this newsreel footage. It's about 9 seconds in on the right side of the apparatus. This Vox.com article also has some good photos (can't vouch for the article itself). Both the video and the photos in the article are views of the apparatus and Stooky Bill as installed in a museum, rather than actually being used to broadcast.

This link has a photo that is described as showing the original demonstrations at Selfridges -- with two ventriloquist heads -- in 1925. Page 3 of this IEEE article about Baird (PDF) has another view of the same apparatus along with a ventriloquist head, dated 1926.

There's also this footage via British Pathe purportedly of Baird demonstrating his device with a ventriloquist dummy as a subject, but I think it's another recreation -- a contemporary one, however. (This footage appears to be unedited source material for use in this 1928 newsreel -- blink and you'll miss it at 2:47.)

This British Pathe film from 1929 shows pretty much everything about mechanical television but Stooky Bill. Worth watching to see these wonderful mechanical devices actually at work. (The televised images shown are also recreated/simulated/faked, though!)

Here's another recreation of a 1930 broadcast using the Baird 30-line system (produced in 1967, but using replicas of the original equipment). More about this in Wikipedia.

This modern video probably is pretty close to how televised images using the Baird system would have looked to a viewer.
posted by orthicon halo at 6:42 AM on December 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

Thomas Ligotti TV
posted by doctornemo at 7:13 AM on December 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

I was assuming it was a recreation, because it seemed unlikely to have been filmed at that quality and certainly not at that audio quality, but I was annoyed that it was't giving any further info on the source, so thanks for doing the research.
posted by tavella at 3:24 PM on December 29, 2021

At first glanceI saw the name “Baird” and that television and puppets were involved, and thought it was going to be related to Bil Baird.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:10 AM on December 30, 2021

Baird was just one of the many electronic pioneers who brought television to the marketplace. I recently read Tube: The Invention of Television by David & Marshall Jon Fisher. Philo T Farnsworth is better known for inventing the TV camera but he also worked on the CRT (which used to mean Cathode Ray Tube). He had investors, curious about how things were going, and he invited them over to his lab on Greene Street in downtown SF, for a demo. It was still very rudimentary at this point, he could only display simple geometric shapes, but they were insistent -- "When are we gonna see some money in this thing, Farnesworth?" He ushered them into the lab, and there it was -- a little two-inch screen, glowing with the image of a dollar sign. Smiles all around.
posted by Rash at 9:16 AM on December 30, 2021

Donald F. McLean's The Dawn of TV is worth a look - he's restored several recordings of early TV including a 1927 test disc with Stookie Bill and the first BBC musical revue from 1933. It's just a pity that we don't have the sound for them!
posted by offog at 12:48 PM on December 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

I remember that, years ago, I was reading an otherwise forgotten Wodehouse story in which the viewpoint character is sitting in a pub with a television. This was only remarked on as a source of annoyance. To me, it was a real surprise, as I thought that the story was vaguely set in the 20s or early 30s as all Plum’s stories were. At the time, I took it as a reminder that he was riding that horse into the sunset, so to speak, but I guess it was just possible there was a TV in the Wooster salad days.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:36 PM on December 30, 2021