Stooky Bill was the name given to the head of a
ventriloquist
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered prop known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is v ...
dummy that Scottish television pioneer
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demo ...
used in his 1924 experiments to transmit a
televised
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
image between rooms in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street, London.
Baird invented some of the first experimental
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
systems. In 1924 he developed a
mechanical television
Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is a television system that relies on a mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and generate the video signal, and a si ...
system to transmit moving images by means of electrical signals, which he demonstrated on 25 March 1925 at a London department store, Selfridges. It consisted of a spinning disk set with a spiral pattern of 30 lenses. As each lens rotated past the illuminated subject, it focused the light from a spot on the subject on a selenium
photoelectric cell
A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon. . This converted the brightness of the image at each spot into a proportional electric signal, which could be sent to a receiver by radio waves. As each lens swept past the subject, it scanned a successive line of the image. At the receiver, a light shining through the holes in a similar rotating disk recreated an image of the subject.
Due to the low sensitivity of the photoelectric cells, Baird's first system was not able to televise human faces, because they had inadequate contrast. So Baird used a ventriloquist's dummy, whose brightly painted face had greater contrast, and made it move and talk before the scanner. Stooky Bill and another Baird dummy, "James" have been jokingly called "the first television actors".
"Stooky" or "stookie" is
Scots for
stucco
Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...
or
plaster of Paris
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "re ...
, or for a
plaster cast
A plaster cast is a copy made in plaster of another 3-dimensional form. The original from which the cast is taken may be a sculpture, building, a face, a pregnant belly, a fossil or other remains such as fresh or fossilised footprints – p ...
used to immobilise bone fractures.
The term is also used for someone who is slow-witted or awkward in his movements. The
incandescent lights
An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxida ...
illuminating the subject to be televised generated so much heat that Baird couldn't use a human for the testing, so Stooky Bill was used. Eventually the hair became singed and the painted face became cracked by the heat.
See also
*
Mechanical television
Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is a television system that relies on a mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and generate the video signal, and a si ...
*
History of television
The concept of television was the work of many individuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first practical transmissions of moving images over a radio system used mechanical rotating perforated disks to scan a scene into a time-var ...
*
Phonovision
Phonovision is a proof of concept format and experiment for recording a mechanical television signal on gramophone records. The format was developed in the late 1920s in London by Scottish television pioneer John Logie Baird. The objective was ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
David Hall's video art piece ''Stooky Bill TV'', for Channel 4 TV 1990John Logie Baird's test subject 'Stookie Bill'
Science Museum Group Collection
*John Burnside; Kirsty Wark; Alistair McGowa
The Ballad of Stooky Bill
BBC Radio 4
History of television
Ventriloquists' dummies