Further information
Professor Cyril Hilsum CBE FRS FREng FAsNAE presents the second Annual Peter Lindsay Memorial Lecture “Flat panel television – How the UK made it happen”.
Attendance is free with registration in advance: l.brown@imperial.ac.uk.
Abstract: Almost overnight high street shops changed their television stocks. Out went the familiar cathode ray tubes, and flat panels were everywhere. The picture you saw was much the same, but the set was very different. That change was the result of inspired physics, chemistry, and engineering, coupled together in a way unfamiliar to industry and academia alike, and the UK role was crucial. The UK was not inactive in the first years of television. They set the seeds, first with the discovery of the electron by JJ Thomson in 1897 and then the invention of the vacuum tube by Ambrose Fleming in 1904. The first transmission of an image was done by John Logie Baird in 1924, admittedly through a cumbersome collection of moving mirrors and shutters. The world’s first regular TV programmes were transmitted by the BBC in 1936, using a fully electronic system made by EMI-Marconi. But the UK did little after that in the way of TV innovation. That this situation changed owes much to one of our politicians, who, probably unwittingly, set us on a road of invention that has led to the modern flat-panel TV. His name is unhallowed, for he later was discredited, fortunately for reasons distinct from electronics. Nevertheless, he started a Government display programme which, though never formally approved, rapidly encompassed defence laboratories, universities, and industry. The events that followed weave together in a fascinating tapestry, bringing in strong personalities, international friction, patent controversies, and scientific triumphs.
Biography: Professor Cyril Hilsum was born in the east end of London in 1925 and from an early age showed some bent for engineering, taking toys to pieces to find out how they worked. He graduated from UCL with a physics degree in 1945, and was called to join the Royal Naval Scientific Service where he made progress in research on thermal imaging and semiconductors. In ignorance and bravado he then chose to work on gallium arsenide, a poisonous explosive compound, which his group found uses for as a microwave source and laser. There was a slight hiccup in his career in 1964, when the Director of the establishment where he was working, the Services Electronics Research Laboratory, announced that it was impossible for them to work together, and he had no intention of leaving. Professor Hilsum took the hint, and spent 19 years at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, where he developed an interest in flat panel displays. By 1983 he was the most senior working scientist in the Civil Service and became Director of Research at GEC where he was finally prised away from some years after the normal retiring age. He retains connections with academia as a Visiting Professor at the University of Durham and UCL. His appetite for personal research is kept alive by working for a small company in the North-East on functional polymers. Professor Hilsum has received a number of Awards and Medals from institutions, was President of the Institute of Physics, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was made a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Engineering 25 years ago; he doesn’t think they knew about the toys!
The Annual Peter Lindsay Memorial Lecture is presented by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in partnership with the City and Guilds College Association.
A pre-lecture tea will served from 16.45 in Room 509 in the Electrical Engineering Building.